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THE 
HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 



BY 
E. WASHBURN HOPKINS, Ph.D., LL.D, 

Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology, 
Yale University 



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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1918 

AU rights reserved 



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COPTEIGHT, 1918 

By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1918. 



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PREFACE 

In the language of one of the savage races mentioned 
in this volume the word religion means the sacred tree. 
Although innocent of allegory, yet, as in many other regards, 
in this definition the savage has suggested a profound 
truth. For religion is, as it were, a tree. Its roots lie 
deep in the darkness of primeval earth; its growth must 
precede its sheltering foliage; and its unripened fruits are 
not pleasant. Yet, watered by a living spring, it has risen 
out of a soil black and even gruesome, since blood too has 
fertilized it, but risen nevertheless it has, slowly exalting 
itself heavenward; and under it sits nearly all mankind. 

In the course of this volume we shall study the roots and 
the higher growth of this tree, which through its age- 
long development, as any tree changes its earth-drawn 
sustenance into something more ethereal, has transmuted 
terror into reverent awe, hunger into hope, lust into love. 
We shall trace the slow progress of such roots of religion 
as bear today the names taboo, fetishism, totemism; see 
how taboo invested with spiritual power the moral com- 
mand, insured the home, and made for civilization; how 
fetishism confirmed the thought that man depends on a 
spiritual something, gave faith in a power that helped, and 
made that power the judge of right and wrong; how 
totemism linked man in communion with the divine and 
in conjunction with seasonal nature-worship founded ritual 
in the recurrent form necessary to religious stability. We 
shall see in short that the higher not only is above the 
lower but that it has ascended out of the lower. Savagery 
did not give place to civilization but developed into it, was 
already civilization in the germ. 



PREFACE 

So Egypt merely intensified the idea of communion when 
it made the soul the Osiris and burgeoned into the mys- 
ticism which became the mystery of human brotherhood 
in divine sonship. All these ideas remained conserved in 
the higher growth, and others as well; the belief that the 
single member might be cut off for the good of the whole, 
that evil like good had assumed a personal form, that law was 
established on divine will, and even that the moral was 
more important than the ritual law : " There are the forty- 
nine rites to be practised but to be pure of heart is better," 
said one who lived some centuries before our era. 

Naturally, therefore, the question arises: If religion 
be all one tree, and even the acorn an embryonic oak, is 
there anything essential that makes the limb which shel- 
ters us different from others, such as the noble, if narrow, 
branch called Mohammedanism; the broad bough of 
Vishnuism, with its devotion to a personal Lord and its 
belief that this Lord once lived on earth as man; or 
Buddhism, with its gentle yet exalted faith ; or Zoroastrian- 
ism, which gave the world its virgin-born saviour, archan- 
gels, Ahriman, and an eschatology still potent under another 
name? That a sacred tree may have one Golden Bough 
is another truth adumbrated by savagery, and such a bough 
is surely different from others. The inquiry then is not 
futile, though it can here be answered only by pointing out 
salient distinctions. Nowhere in Zoroastrianism is there 
escape from the round of ceremonies and iteration of creed. 
Mohammedanism sufficed for its time and place, but its 
fruit never ripened in the sun. Vishnuism freed itself 
from form ; but its chief fruit, which was loving faith, 
either became rotten with erotic mysticism, a form of decay 
which once threatened the fruit of the Golden Bough also, 
or shrivelled into a dry husk: the sinner dies forgiven who 
expires ejaculating Rama's Name. As the fruit of our 
bough is different from this, so it is not that of its nearest 
spiritual neighbour. Buddhism, either in the primitive 
atheistic form or in the nihilistic idealism whose crowning 

2 



PREFACE 

fruit is the Void. For, as this is no real fruit but its nega- 
tion, Buddhism is left with nothing but the barren leaves 
of rites and the thornless twigs of its passive doctrine, not 
to injure others. 

But the fruit of the Golden Bough is active love not 
passive pity ; its very dogma is that dogma is insufficient ; 
its pure religion and undefiled is this, to serve others; and 
no bough can be broader : " In every nation he that fears 
God and works righteousness is accepted of Him." In a 
word, historically the essence of the difference lies here: 
All higher religions are a complex of early and late 
growths; they all are either intense or broad as compared 
with their origins. But one religion is more intense and 
broader than any other. Other religions have been liberal, 
not only Vishnuism but Zoroastrianism ; others have been 
intense, vital, like Mohammedanism ; but only one has con- 
centrated itself upon love of God in man and defined every 
man as a brother. Christianity came not to destroy, but 
to fulfil, to change Buddha's negative kindness into actual 
devotion; to enlarge as well as to intensify the vision of 
ages. Virile as Mohammedanism, gentle as Hinduism, cath- 
olic as Greek mysticism, ethical as Hebraism ; it differs, shall 
we say, in surpassing; or is that to prejudge the case? 

Yet this Preface sums up, rather than prejudges. But 
in the chapters which really lead to it, the writer has sought 
to present each religion impartially and objectively. His 
purpose has been to sketch religions not controversially but 
historically, to set before his readers, who are presumed 
to be already fairly well informed but not special stu- 
dents, the main outlines of religious phenomena, as they 
have appeared and still appear in the world. As such 
readers will see, he has been cramped by lack of space 
as well as by personal limitations. Despite the generosity 
of the publishers, who have permitted this book to outgrow 
its projected stature, it has been difficult to compress so 
great a matter into so small a compass. The author him- 
self feels how curtly he has dismissed many phases on 

3 



PREFACE 

which he would gladly have enlarged. He has indeed 
suppressed almost as much as he has published and had 
he not been assured that there was need of a manual of 
this sort he would not have ventured to crowd so many 
problems into one volume. The need was a practical one. 
The weighty manual of Chantepie de la Saussaye, Lehrbuch 
der Religions geschichte, not only is a two-volume encyclo- 
pedia but it shares the disadvantage (together, it must be 
admitted, with the advantage) of all encyclopedic works 
in being written by various hands without correlation, so 
that what is affirmed here is denied there and what is said 
there is repeated here. Nevertheless, this will be a stand- 
ard treatise for such students as can read German or may 
prefer a French translation. Unhappily it has not yet been 
done into English. Other manuals, some of them admir- 
able, have been published, but the authors have generally 
confined themselves to the higher aspects of religion. Of 
these the writer would mention particularly the masterly 
exposition of the great religions by Professor George F. 
Moore, whose History of Religions, in two volumes, one 
of which has already appeared, should be in the hands of 
all advanced students, and Professor George A. Barton's 
excellent synopsis of Classical and Oriental religions, called 
the Religions of the World, which appeared after most of 
the present volume was written. 

The skeleton bibliographies appended to the chapters of 
this History are intended chiefly to introduce the reader 
to the literature and put him on the track of other books. 
No attempt has been made to display titles, only to men- 
tion a few important works, arranged withal neither alpha- 
betically nor chronologically, but, in general, according to 
the precedent reading matter of each chapter or in the 
order in which the few volumes mentioned may most 
advantageously be read. These books themselves cite 
others and are often provided with more extensive bibliog- 
raphies. 

In regard to the rendering of words in the writer's own 

4 



PREFACE 

Special field, it has been his experience that in works of 
this kind transliteration without diacritical marks is prefer- 
able to that meticulous precision which attempts to render 
foreign sounds through the inadequate medium of distorted 
English letters. This attempt becomes really absurd when 
to dot a nasal conceals the fact that the English nasal itself 
is practically indistinguishable from the lingual nasal of 
the original. If any letters are marked, they should be 
the dentals, which in Sanskrit are really dental and are 
pronounced quite differently from ours. No English 
tongue without a special training will ever pronounce 
Buddha correctly. In respect of the length of Sanskrit 
vowels, the matter is somewhat other ; but on the whole the 
author prefers the modern Hindu and classical practice of 
ignoring vowel-lengths in printing. If Demeter (not 
Demeter), why Uma? But for those really anxious to 
know the length of Sanskrit vowels, hints have been given 
in the index. 

In conclusion, the writer desires to acknowledge his 
indebtedness to several of his colleagues, without indeed 
implicating them in any responsibility for what he has per- 
haps inadequately set forth. The general editor of this 
series, Professor E. Hershey Sneath, has given the writer 
various useful suggestions and references, especially in 
the province of European philosophy. The view that 
Arabia did not belch forth Semites at intervals of half-mil- 
lenniums is of course (as Semitic scholars will know) 
that of Professor Albert T. Clay. A lecture on Hebrew 
mysticism by Professor Frank C. Porter suggested the 
distinction made between classes of Hebrew prophets. 
Professor Benj. W. Bacon has kindly revised the notes on 
the dates of New Testament writings. From his book, 
mentioned but not explicitly as the source, was taken the 
phrase which points the distinction between the doctrine 
of Jesus and the doctrine about Jesus. An unintended 
reticence, noticed too late, as to the names of two distin- 
guished scholars may be rectified here. The " excellent 

5 



PREFACE 

authority " cited on page 371 is the writer's friend and 
colleague, Professor A. V. W. Jackson. The other eminent 
scholar, to whom reference is made on page 550, is the 
well-known writer on Roman institutions, Dr. W. Warde 
Fowler. 

New Haven, 

September 8, 19 18. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Definitions, Sources, Classifications of Re- 
ligions I 

II General Characteristics of Primitive Reli- 
gions . 14 

III African Religions — i, Spirit-Lore .... 24 

2, Fetish and Idol 35 

IV Religion of the Ainus and Shamans .... 46 
V Polynesian Religions — i. Spirits, Myths . . 59 

2, Mana and Taboo 67 

VI Religions of North America 75 

VII Religions of Mexico, Central and South'^ 
America 94 

VIII Religion of the Celts . 120 

IX Religion of the Slavic Peoples 138 

X Religion of the Teutons 149 

XI Religions of India. From the Vedas to 

Buddha 170 

XII Buddhism 183 

XIII Hindu Sectarian Religions . . . . . . 205 

XIV Religions of China. Pre-Confucian Religion 224 
XV Confucius, Lao-tse, Taoism 249 

XVI Religions of Japan, Shintoism and Buddhism 275 

XVII The Religion of Egypt 309 

XVIII Babylonian and Assyrian Religion .... 344 

XIX Zoroastrianism .......... 371 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XX The Religion of Israel 414 

XXI The Religion of Mohammed 452 

XXII Greek Religion 483 

XXIII The Religion of the Romans 516 

XXIV The Religion of Christ and Christianity . . 552 



EDITOR'S PROSPECTUS 

One of the notable developments of modern scholarship is 
an increasing interest in the scientific study of rehgion. It 
is safe to say that never before has religion been made the 
subject of such careful and extended investigation as during 
the last three decades. History, anthropology, psychology, 
archaeology, comparative religion, and sociology have been 
drawn upon to aid in the ' determination and interpretation 
of the facts of religious experience; — each of them mak- 
ing a substantial contribution toward this important end. 
Indeed ! during this period a new science, the psychology of 
religion, has come into being, and already a comparatively 
large literature on this subject has been developed. Philos- 
ophy, also, has felt the impulse of this interest, and, in the 
more speculative fields of religious scholarship, a philosophy 
of religion is rapidly supplanting dogmatic theology in the 
effort to furnish an ultimate interpretation of the phenomena 
of religious consciousness. Furthermore, application of the 
historical method to the study of Old and New Testament 
Literature has contributed toward a much better under- 
standing of the Bible, and to a more intelligent appreciation, 
and a higher valuation, of the Christian religion. 

Further interest in religion is manifest in the widespread 
movement in behalf of systematic religious education. Bi- 
ology, genetic and child psychology, the psychology of ado- 
lescence, and experimental pedagogy, are rendering valu- 
able aid in the organization and application of curricula in 
this important field. Thus far elementary and secondary 
religious education has received more attention than reli- 
gious education in the college. The time seems ripe for 
more adequate education along these lines in colleges and 
universities. For this purpose a special literature in the 
history, psychology and philosophy of religion, and in Old 
and New Testament Interpretation is necessary. The " Re- 



EDITOR'S PROSPECTUS 

ligious Science and Literature Series " is specially designed 
to meet this need. Each book of the Series is written by a 
well-known specialist, and is prepared with reference to 
class-room work. The Series includes the following vol- 
umes: 

The History of Religion (Ready) 

E. Washburn Hopkins, Ph.D., LL.D., 
Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology, Yale Uni- 
versity 

Psychology of Religion (In preparation) 

Luther A. Weigle, Ph.D., 
Professor of Christian Nurture, Yale University 

Philosophy of Religion (In preparation) 

Douglas Clyde Macintosh, Ph.D., 
Professor of Systematic Theology, Yale University 

History and Literature of the Old Testament (In preparation) 
Charles Cutler Torrey, Ph.D., D.D., 
Professor of Semitic Languages, Yale University 

History of the Religion of Israel (Ready) 

George A. Barton, Ph.D., 
Professor of Biblical Literature and Semitic Languages, Bryn 
Mawr College 

History and Literature of the New Testament (In preparation) 
Henry Thatcher Fowler, Ph.D., 
Professor of Biblical Literature and History, Brown University 

Life and Teachings of Jesus (In preparation) 

Edward Increase Bosworth, D.D., 
Professor of New Testament Language and Literature, and Dean 
of Oberlin Seminary 

A Book About the English Bible (In press) 

Josiah H. Penniman, Ph.D., LL.D., 
Professor of English Literature and Vice-provost of the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania 

History of the Christian Religion (In preparation) 

John Winthrop Platner, D.D., 
Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Andover Theological Semi- 
nary 

E. Hershey Sneath. 
Yale University. 



THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

CHAPTER ONE 

DEFINITIONS, SOURCES AND CLASSIFICATIONS OF RELIGIONS 

A CERTAIN Professor of Rhetoric at Milan, Augustine by 
name, seeking to define time, said: ''Ask me, and I do 
not know; ask me not, and I know." Every one knows 
time, feels conscious of it, recognizes that man exists in 
time. Yet who can define it properly, or say that it ever 
began or never began? So it is with religion. We are 
conscious of it, we feel that it exists and that we exist as 
religious beings; and each of us may know what his own 
religion is. Yet who can say of religion in general that it 
is this or that and who would venture to assert that his 
own religion is the only religion? To take a concrete ex- 
ample, what shall we say of a moral atheist and of an 
immoral theist, are they religious or irreligious? 
1 Nevertheless, we^must, as students of religion, attempt 
some definition of what we are to study, and for the pur- 
poses of religious history this definitiori^ust exclude^jB ai- 
ticulars and include ^y hat is common to all the religions jye 
a^re to investigate. Now what is common "to all religions is 
belief in a superhuman power and an adjustment of human 
activities to the requirements of that power, such an adjust- 
ment as may enable the individual believer to exist more 
jiappily. As physical life must be adjusted to its environ- 
ment, so mental life must be adjusted, and this adjustment 
is expressed by the activities exercised in view of the re- 
ligious belief. Our definition then must imply belief, but it 
should also emphasize the activity, mental and physical, 
which results from that belief. 

z 



2 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS^ 

On the other hand, we ought not to intrude into the defi- 
nition any implication or expression of the answer to the 
query whether man has an innate religious faculty or merely 
impressions that produce that faculty, and we may not even 
imply in our definition that religion necessitates a belief in 
spiritual powers, because such belief is not essential. To 
2Ut into the definition what cannot be omitted and to omit 
what oCfght"hot to be put in : Religion is Squaring hu mak 
life with superhuman life. In the effort to adjust oneself 
to superhuman life, belief is assumed, but the definition 
rather stresses that adjustment without which religion be- 
comes pretence or hypocrisy. As to belief in a superhuman 
power, even Positivism, with its '* veneration for the power 
which exercises a dominant influence over life" (Frederic 
Harrison's definition of religion), really reveres a non- 
material, if not spiritual power, inasmuch as the power vene- 
rated cannot be explained in terms of matter or material 
force and is beyond the control of humanity, while directing 
it. And so too Buddhism, which has been a thorn in the 
flesh of those who have tried to make it fit into their more 
elaborate definitions of religion, is included as a real re- 
ligion in this definition, for Karma is a superhuman power 
which Hes outside of sense-experience.^ 

It may perhaps be objected that such a definition as has 
been proposed is too cold or too vague and does not cor- 
respond to what we feel religion should be; it ought to 
contain something which implies a belief in the immortality 
of thesoul, in God, and in our feeling of dependence on 
him. But this is exactly what has destroyed the value of 
many famous definitions of religion, which have substituted 
what men think ought to be the hall-mark of religion for 
that which is actually found to be essential. Vpor in adopt- 

1 Although Buddha was an atheist, Tide represents Buddhism as 
haying " Buddha for its God/' simply because Tiele's definition re- 
quires a belief in God as the base of reHgion. And Sir Monier- 
Williams, confronted with the same problem as to the status of 
Buddhism, boldly declared that Buddhism is no religion at all! 



DEFINITIONS 3 

ingany such definition we drop back into the attitude^,.©^ 
those~wHonmake-a~distin:cti6irEeFw the false and the true, 
as' they understand it, the test of real religion; who say, or 
think, "that what they themselves believe is religion and what 
they do not believe is superstition. ^ 

Yet the definitions of religion furnished by others are of 
value to the student, who ought not to be without such 
historical background and to whom it is important to know 
what other investigators of religion mean when they use 
that word. Even to glance at the interpretation of religion 
conveyed by philology is not a waste of time. 

To begin with some of these unconscious revelations given 
by man's crystallized thought, the Greek sebas and the Latin 
reverentia imply a theory of religious origins still taught in 
our schools. Sebas is " shrinking " and reverentia' is " ti- 
midity," and before reverentia became piety or sebas had 
formed its child eusebeia, these were the earliest verbal 
equivalents of religion. The word religion itself was de- 
fined by the later Romans as justitia adversus deos. Cicero 
derived it from relego, implying a careful knowledge of the 
needs of the gods — religentem esse oportet religiosum nefas 
(be religious but not superstitious). Others connected 
the word with lex, law, and religo, implying an obligation. 
Earlier still is the notion of religion furnished by Plato in 
the mocking challenge of the Euthyphro : " Is not religion 
perhaps merely a science of begging and getting?" This 
last explanation of religion takes us direct to the modern 
theory of Lyall,^ who regards the principle of do ut des as 
the " foundation of natural religion." Andrew Lang has 
remarked that this is virtually the definition of Frazer, who 
makes religion " a propitiation or conciliation of powers su- 
perior to man." ^ 

The definition of Seneca, who says that "to know God 
and imitate him " is religion, brings us to the practical diffi- 

^ Sir A. C. Lyall, Asiatic Studies, London, 1899, ii, p. 172. 
2 Andrew Lang, Magic and Religion, London, 1901, p. 59. 



4 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

culty already discussed. This admirable definition is rather 
a precept than a definition; it is not what religion is but 
what it should be. So with definitions which make religion 
imply the love of God, the command of conscience, the feel- 
ing of trust in God, etc. From the point of view of our 
study, Schleiermacher's " consciousness of contact between 
the soul and the universe," though a noble definition of re- 
ligion, is too noble ; it does not apply to the religion of 
savages. Bishop Butler's famous definition, *' Religion is 
« the belief in one God or Creator and Moral Governor of 
the world and in a future state of retribution," would today 
exclude a host of religious civilized people of his own 
church, as it even then excluded hosts who were not be- 
lievers in his religion. The same may be said of James 
Martineau's *' Religion is a belief in an everlasting God, 
that is, a divine mind and will ruling the universe and hold- 
ing moral relations with mankind." Noticeable is it that 
these theologians regard religion as wholly an intellectual 
conviction, with not a word to imply that man does anything 
as part of his religion. On the other hand, we have to be on 
guard just as carefully against those who do not regard 
intelligence but feeling as the one and only thing in reli- 
gion. " The mark of real religion," says Pfleiderer, " is 
sentiment." Tiele, a professed student of religion but more 
a theologian, agrees with Pfleiderer ; while Reville goes so 
far as to make this sentiment love; but it is clear that here 
also " real religion " is merely the author's religion. Tiele, 
however, resolves religion into " words and deeds," and that 
is an advance on the definition given by the philosophers 
and theologians cited above.^ 

So, to define religion as the " determination of human life 
by the sentiment of a bond uniting the human mind to that 
mysterious mind whose domination of the world and of 
itself it recognizes and to whom it delights in feeling itself 

^ Tiele, Elements of Religion, London, 1877, makes words and 
deeds the expression of conceptions and emotions, but he takes 
emotion as the starting-point. 



DEFINITIONS 5 

united " (Reville) is much more than can be said of many 
religions, and the same fault vitiates Max Miiller's other- 
wise defective definition of religion as *' a longing after the 
infinite" and " a mental faculty which enables man to ap- 
prehend the infinite," the latter being only a little more 
incredible than the former, as was felt by the author him- 
self.^ 

From the philosophers we do indeed get one definition 
that might answer for every phase of belief. This is Ed- 
ward Caird's, as given in a popular article,^ when he says 
that " a man's religion is the expression of his summed up 
meaning and the purport of his whole consciousness of 
things " ; but this implies merely a mental state and attitude 
toward life and does not imply the recognition of anything 
superhuman or spiritual, the one essential of religion differ- 
entiating it from philosophy, which may or may not recog- 
nize a superhuman element. One may of course arbitrarily 
define religion as being devoid of such an element, just as a 
painter may say that art is his religion or Heine that blaue 
Augen are his heaven ; but he is simply using a well-known 
conception in an extraordinary manner. Virtually equiva- 
lent to Reville's definition is a recent attempt to define re- 
ligion psychologically as " the endeavour to secure the recog- 
nition of socially recognized values through specific actions 
that are believed to evoke some agency dififerent from the 
ordinary ego of the individual, or from other merely human 
beings, and that imply a feeling of dependence upon this 
agency." ^ 

On the whole, the anthropologists have defined religion in 
better terms than have the students of comparative religion. 
They at least know that the Andaman Islander does not ap- 
prehend the infinite or feel himself delightfully united to a 

1 In his Gifford Lectures of 1891, Miiller attempted to explain 
away the definition given in those of 1880. 

^Metaphysical Magazine, June, 1902. 

3 See W. K. Wright in the American Journal of Theology, July, 
1912, p. 385f. 



6 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

mysterious mind. But the trouble with the definitions of 
the anthropologists is that each reflects a one-sided theory. 
This is the case with E. B. Tylor's " belief in spiritual be- 
ings," while as a definition it ignores activities set in motion 
by belief. Mere belief is not rehgion. One may believe 
in the moon without having religious relations with the 
moon, and so one may believe in spirits without their mak- 
ing part of one's religion. On the other hand, when 
Saussaye defines religion as the " belief in superhuman 
powers and worship of them," there is a vitiating error in 
the assumption that religion implies worship, for there may 
be no worship and yet a change of conduct may be religious, 
be, in fact, the sole outer activity resulting from the reli- 
gious belief.^ Finally it may be said of Arnold's memorable 
dictum (religion is "morality touched with emotion") that 
from an historical or comparative point of view it is mean- 
ingless. Some religions are immoral, as Arnold would de- 
fine morality, while some are unmoral, or have no obvious 
connection with morality. 

Thus the history of religion is simply the story of how 
different communities have succeeded in adjusting their 
lives to what they have believed to be a living power, not 
identical with their own power but superhuman, even if 
they themselves may expect eventually, when they too have 
become more than human, to obtain a similar power or 
become identified with it. They may even expect as human 
beings to control this power, but it is not a power they 
themselves possess in the same degree as does the religious 
object. We make here, provisionally, no distinction between 
magic and religion, for, as will be seen, the two are not abso- 
lutely separate. They are, in fact, closely inter-related. 
Both at least respect a superhuman power. It is, moreover, 
a living power. The heathen in his blindness bows down to 
wood and stone, but to him they are not mere wood and stone. 

1 This is ignored by the French sociologists. Thus M. Durkheim 
defines religious phenomena as croyances obligatoires connexes de 
pratigues deiinies (i.e., of taboo, etc.), and religion as a unified sys- 
tem of beliefs and practices (see below). 



SOURCES 



SOURCES AND NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE 

Our present knowledge of religious phenomena is based 
upon various bodies of evidence, none of them unimpeach- 
able. Since it is quite as important to know the value of 
the evidence as to be acquainted with the source and the 
matter itself, it will be well to range the sources in an 
ascending scale according to their comparative worth. 

First. The linguistic evidence. Although, as in the ex- 
ample given from the Greek sebas, linguistic evidence may 
occasionally be of considerable value, yet it is more likely 
to lead astray than to lead aright. It is not evidence that 
can be accepted, even on the authority of an expert, without 
great reserve. Especially is etymological evidence of ques- 
tionable validity. It is liable to be overthrown at any time 
and is never much more than learned guesswork. Theories 
based on the identity of Yahweh with a word meaning 
" hurrah," or on the common origin of god-names in differ- 
ent branches even of the same race may be true, but they 
are often as lacking in truth as they are commonly full of 
ingenuity. Many of them are like a certain theory of the 
identity of the Aryan and Semitic races, based on the self- 
evident fact that Abraham is " a Brahman." 

Another point in regard to linguistic evidence is often 
overlooked. This is that even when the derivation of a 
word is fairly certain, the etymology itself may mislead us, 
because words change from their etymological meaning and 
the concept of a divinity which appears to be revealed by a 
true derivation may not be at all the concept of the divinity 
as it was when the particular word was applied as a name 
to the divinity. For example, deus in Latin no more means 
" shining " than god in English means " invoked," although 
the etymology of deus and of god point to these conceptions, 
respectively, as the meaning back of the historical words. 
The past meaning is not often the present meaning and the 
two must be carefully distinguished. Further, the concept 
of any divinity, however named, is from its inception condi- 



8 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

tioned by the mental and social status of the community. A 
day called Thursday means the day of Thor and thor is 
thunder, but for all that we do not recognize a ** day of 
Thor " or a '* day of thunder," and no more did the historic 
Germans worship a god thunder. In fact, far from being 
a mere noise in the sky, Thor was a heavenly man with a 
decent family of his own and with intimate relations with 
his clan on earth. To interpret him in any historical period 
as mere sound would be an unsound interpretation (to put 
an old pun to a new use), and so, generally, the names of 
gods do not really reflect the nature of gods at any historical 
period, and they may never have done so. For back of 
the time we know the god there is only the word ; but how 
it was applied we cannot tell, whether to designate a god, 
a devil, or a sound per se (in the case of Thor), for we 
know nothing as to the worship of this now unknown 
being. 

Second. Archaeological evidence. Testimony of the 
monuments of (a) the neolithic age, and (b) of later times. 
Meagre and uncertain is the earliest evidence of religion. 
We learn that skulls were trepanned and because savages now 
trepan in order to let out the soul, therefore (it is argued) 
the men of neolithic times believed in soul. For the same 
reason they are thought to have believed in a future life. 
A nascent fetishism has also been predicated of neolithic 
man because of the objects found buried with his remains, 
which to others seem proof of a belief in a future life. 
The testimony, such as it is, is the more uncertain because of 
the uncertainty when the bronze age, as compared with the 
neolithic age, begins. But it is not of moment when the ani- 
mal man began to be religious, especially since we can trace 
the religious elements as far back as the bronze age. The 
objects buried with the corpse may show that at this period 
men believed in a happy future life of eating and drinking, 
when children would need their playthings and men their 
weapons and customary implements. The cave-pictures of 
France may point to a prehistoric magical use of ancient 



SOURCES 9 

figures. Prehistoric stone circles may be of religious sig- 
nificance, but they may be without religious bearing. 

Third. The testimony of ancient writers. Here we 
must distinguish between descriptions of own religions and 
appraisals of foreign religions. Owing to the fact that 
the writers who described the religions of others were gen- 
erally ignorant of them or prejudiced and as a rule got all 
their information at second hand, the value of this testimony 
is extremely variable; often it is most valuable when the 
author is not trying to describe religion at all but, by acci- 
dent, as it were, lets out a secret of religion known not even 
to himself. The most obvious fault in this class of evi^ 
dence, whether furnished by native or foreigner, is its de- 
ficiency. Whole chapters of religion remain unnoticed, 
either because the author is ignorant or because he chooses 
to ignore certain features. Homer, though a Greek, gives 
but a restricted view of Greek religion; therefore a Greek 
religion of the Homeric age based only on Homer is incor- 
rect. Tacitus gives a foreigner's appraisement of the reli- 
gion of the ancient Germans ; but it is by no means to be 
taken as exhaustive or even correct as far as it goes. The 
testimony of literature anyway, it must be remembered, is 
only the testimony of those who were able to compose, to 
leave essays of lasting worth. Thus almost all the testimony 
of this sort comes from the upper intellectual stratum and 
gives a one-sided impression. In all such testimony we 
learn more about the higher side of religion, less about the 
lower ; more of gods, less of goblins. Homer shows us the 
court-beauties of heaven. The poets of the Rig Veda are 
concerned less with demonology than with the worship of 
the great gods. But all the time, both in Greece and in 
India, the lower cult was there; only it is not recorded by 
the poets. 

Fourth. Ethnography. From the study of race-pecul- 
iarities by trained modern observers is to be obtained the 
most valuable evidence in regard to religious phenomena 
in our own day. But, ideal as this testimony might be, much 



lO THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

of it is vitiated by the fact that the observer is not trained ; 
much, by the fact that he is trained to see everything 
through a theory of reUgious origins, which influences his 
testimony. It does not make a real difference whether one 
be an untrained missionary or a prejudiced scientist. All 
this testimony has to be sifted with great care and even 
then some of it is entirely worthless. Taken as a whole, 
however, of course the body of material is of inestimable 
worth. Fortunately we do not have to depend on isolated 
or individual observation and generally the reports are mu- 
tually corrective. It is only necessary to warn the student 
against trusting too entirely the word of any one authority, 
however honest and learned he may be. This source con- 
tains all the data collected by comparative ethnography, in- 
cluding folk-lore and the translations of original hymns and 
legends. 

CLASSIFICATION OF RELIGIONS 

Attempts to classify religions have all failed, because 
there are no clear lines of demarcation between them. 
Classifications suggested are, for example, natural and re- 
demptive, natural and moral, tribal, national, and univer- 
sal. But natural and ethical religions cannot be sharply 
sundered, and the traits of one race reappear in another. 
Unsatisfactory is even the minuteness of De la Grasserie, 
who has made twenty-two divisions of religions.^ The clas- 
sification of Reville, into polytheistic, monotheistic, national, 
and nomistic religions, indicates, at best, striking points of 
difference between important groups. Of all the distinc- 
tions suggested, those between egoistic and altruistic and 
natural and ethical are perhaps the worst, yet even national 
and nomistic are terms largely exchangeable. We shall con- 
sider religions solely as expressions of various stages of 
culture found among various races. 

Yet even in the loosest grouping we must guard against 
one error, the implication of an assumed order of progres- 

1 Compare Jastrow, Study of Religion, New York, 1901, p. 95. 



CLASSIFICATION II 

sion. For example, if animism be discussed before natur- 
ism, the implication is that the former is more primitive. 
Again, retrogression in religion must be reckoned with. A 
religion may have fallen from its former estate and appear 
as mere devil-worship, whereas in fact it is only a higher 
religion that has become decadent. Also chance evidence 
may lead to error. For example, animism has been predi- 
cated as the " earliest form " of religion on the ground that 
the trepanned skull of prehistoric man indicates a belief 
in soul or spirit. But what if, though improbable, the 
earliest religion was worship of tfie sun or moon? No 
trace might have been left of this belief, whereas the skull 
has remained. 

One of the oldest classifications of religions is that which 
separates them all into orthodox and heterodox. But a 
little study will show that no religion is altogether hetero- 
dox. Yet to realize this the study is necessary and it must 
be pursued with the Buddhist's *' open mind." If we take 
up the superstitions that have grouped themselves about the 
practice of taboo, for instance, only to find them risible or 
disgusting, we shall lose their ethical and religious bearing. 
Difficult as it is, we must endeavour rather to put ourselves 
in the position of the taboo-fearing savage and see what 
this brother intended and accomplished. God gave him no 
Moses, but he evolved some of the ten commandments ; his 
taboos were his tables of the law. 

Especially is this attitude desirable in the study of higher 
religions, where heterodoxy almost blends with orthodoxy. 
We must examine not with hostility but with sympathetic 
interest the reason why the Hindu is almost but not quite 
persuaded. And as with religions, so with theories of re- 
ligion. Here care and candor are needed. It is careless 
to assert that there is no race without religion before defin- 
ing religion and examining all races. It is careless to in- 
duce from the data of one field that the Semitic theory of 
sacrifice explains all sacrifice. Candor here, too, implies 
toleration, to listen hopeful of gain to all theories, to dub 



12 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

no school or scholar " all wrong." All schools see some 
truth ; no sober scholar is all wrong. Animist and naturist 
may learn much from each other ; worshippers of the Year- 
demon may reap a harvest from, the devotees of ghosts; 
even the mythologist and the anthropologist, not to speak 
of the sociologist, might conceivably lie down together, not 
only in safety but to their mutual advantage. 

Theories in regard to religious phenomena are very old. 
Six or seven hundred years before Christ, the Hindus were 
already arguing whether their chief devil had been an actual 
person or was merely a natural phenomenon. A few cen- 
turies later a Hindu materialist defended the opinion (main- 
tained two thousand years later by Toland),^ that religion 
was the creation of selfish priests. Others argued that it 
was a gift of God. But neither with such theories nor with 
others has the history of religions to do, except as they 
involve or ignore important data. It has not to establish 
any theory of the origin of religion but to exhibit the facts 
on which different theories have been built. Thus we shall 
! not discuss as theories Mannhardt's hypothesis of religion 
originating in the cult of vegetation-spirits, nor Robertson 
Smith's view that sacrifice begins as a communion-feast, nor 
Usener's idea that all gods are at first functional powers, 
nor Sir J. G. Frazer's ever-changing interpretation of totem- 
ism and his contention that redemption begins with the 
regicide, though we shall have occasion to refer to them all. 
For the same reason it will be unnecessary to examine the 
theory of Messrs. Durkheim and Mauss that the collective 
rather than the individual mind originates religion, a theory 
which practically maintains that it is impossible to under- 
stand any religion other than that of the human group in 
which each is born; which group has a consciousness so 
unique that no outsider can do more than register its ob- 
jective phenomena. Hence modern French sociologists dis- 
approve of all attempts to appreciate sympathetically any 

1 John Toland, Christianity not Mysterious, London, 1696; 
Jastrow, op. cit., p. 15. 



CLASSIFICATION 13 

religion, more particularly those " pre-logical," remote in 
time, but also those remote in place. They believe with 
the Hindu that only a snake can see a snake's legs and they 
are not altogether wrong. Man is the product of his group's 
experience. Nevertheless, it will not be a loss if the stu- 
dent begins by trying to understand the feeling as well as 
the formal ritual of the other man; and it is still question- 
able whether one man is not more like another because of 
his humanity than unlike because of his social group; 
whether, in short, pre-logical and logical are proper substi- 
tutes for primitive and civilized. 

Finally, a word as to the utility of our study. It is with 
religions as with languages, " he who knows one knows 
none " ; that is, he who knows only his own does not know 
it well. A man may be a good Buddhist without knowing 
Christianity, but through knowing Christianity he will be a 
better Buddhist; for he will learn what the two religions 
have in common and thus realize that what is common can- 
not be unique. So, knowing better his own, he will become 
a better Buddhist, since not to know is to be circumscribed, 
which leads to the misunderstanding of relative values, 
even, at times, to the acceptance, in evaluating one's own 
religion, of the adventitious for the essential, the packing 
for the package, the myth for the spirit. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Morris Jastrow, Jr., The Study of Religion, New York, 1901. 
C. H. Toy, Introduction to the History of Religion, Boston, 

1913- 
Andrew Lang, The Making of Religion, London, 1900. 
C. C. J. Webb, Group Theories of Religion and the Individual, 

New York, 1916. 



CHAPTER TWO 

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PRIMITIVE RELIGIONS 

In using the word primitive of early undeveloped forms of 
religion it must be understood that primitive is not synony- 
mous with primordial. The word is applied exactly as it 
is commonly applied to primitive art, to connote art found 
among peoples at a low stage today or in ancient times. 
With some exceptions the simpler form is the more primi- 
tive form of thought, whether in art or religion, rather 
more so in fact in religion than in art, as when the Roman 
advanced industrially to the iron age and yet used a stone 
knife for sacrifice, and the Teuton used a stone hammer in 
the religious rite of settling a boundary, and the Australian, 
to whom even stone art is modern, still uses a sharpened 
stick for the rite of circumcision. But there are two as- 
pects of religion, creed and cult. They advance unequally. 
Creed always outstrips cult. What is no longer believed is 
still practised ; the rite preserves as myth the older creed. 
That religions may all be traced back to one primordial 
religion is not wholly a narrow " orthodox " view. In this 
form, however, it is still held by both the Hindu and the 
Christian of very conservative type. For example, about 
two thousand years ago Manu, the Hindu law-giver, de- 
clared, what is still believed by orthodox Brahmans, that 
one true religion was revealed to man in the beginning and 
that all later types of religion have been vain divergencies 
from this divine model, and Dr. Nassau, in his useful book 
on fetishism, says : " All religions had but one source and 
that a pure one. From it have grown perversions varying 

14 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 15 

in their proportions of truth and error," almost as if he were 
translating Manu.^ 

But, with less universal scope and with no implication of 
divine origin, other modern writers have maintained that 
religion has spread out from one centre and infected or 
affected the whole known world, or, more conservatively, a 
great part of the world. Thus the Akkadian theory of Mr. 
J. F. Hewitt ^ attempts to explain the religions of France 
and Mexico as due to the Akkadians of 15000 b. c. in an 
ingenious but not very judicious flood of speculation. An- 
other theory, somewhat like it but sober enough to have been 
adopted by some scientists, is the theory of adaptionism 
advocated by O. Gruppe. Starting with a study of Greek 
Cults in relation to Oriental religions, the author has tried 
to show that religion originated in the deification of intoxi- 
cants in western Asia and thence extended itself in all di- 
rections. Such anthropologists as have been influenced by 
this theory accordingly hold that northern Europe, orig- 
inally irreligious, received religion from Asia Minor after 
the glacial period and this they think is the reason why the 
remains of corpses are found in the kitchenmiddens, lack 
of burial proving lack of religion. But perhaps friends 
were buried in the sea and foes were left unburied. It is 
at any rate a slender proof of irreligion. 

The latest theory of this sort is that of Professor Grafton 
E. Smith, who, rejecting the idea that the human mind 
works out in the same way in different localities, has sought 
to prove ^ that mummification, megalithic architecture, and 
idol-making, with the subsidiary factors of sun-worship, 
serpent-worship, and circumcision, first arose c.3000 b. c. 
in Egypt and spread thence all over Asia, Polynesia, and 
South America. How the religious migration took place 
Mr. Smith promises to explain in a future volume. His 

1 R. H. Nassau, Fetichism in West Africa, New York, 1904, p. 23. 

2 History and Chronology of the Myth-Making Age, London and 
New York, 1901. 

3 The Migrations of Early Culture, New York, 1916. 



l6 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

theory has an advantage over the others mentioned in that 
it does not attempt to prove more than that certain rehgious 
features have migrated.^ 

It is indeed probable that there has been rehgious inter- 
course between European and Asiatic races from very early 
times. But v^e do not know the extent of Sumerian influ- 
ence upon the Semite, Semitic upon the Egyptian, Finnish 
upon the Teuton; still less do we know how much Chinese 
religion was affected by the West or in how far early Ro- 
man religion borrowed from the East ; least of all, whether 
Asia influenced America. In the narrower field of Mediter- 
ranean cults, it is not so much a question of race as of 
tradition.^ There are racial characteristics which affect re- 
ligion but there is no general Semitic as opposed to a gen- 
eral Aryan religion. Fundamentally, primitive religious 
characteristics are human not racial. 

These characteristics are not only human in the sense of 
universal, but, what is more important, they are human in 
the sense that the religious attitude is not a peculiar atti- 
tude, but it is the attitude assumed toward other humans. 
There has been a prolonged discussion on the idle question 
whether magic or religion is the " child." The argument 
in favour of magic as prior to religion was that religion is 
public, magic is private ; religion propitiates, magic coerces ; 
and when man found that he could not get what he wanted 
by coercion he tried propitiation. It is assumed further 
that a being coerced is inimical, a being propitiated is be- 
nevolent, and spirits are first regarded as inimical. On the 
other hand, it is granted that there is a form of magic which 
is practised without regard to a superhuman power. This 
has been called '* primitive science." Like makes like ; 
sticking thorns into an image, or melting it, produces a simi- 

1 That all cultural ideas arose but once and have spread by loan 
to one race after another and that there is no common human psy- 
chology, this is the basis of the Methode der Ethnologic of F. 
Graebner, Heidelburg, 191 1. 

2 See Darmesteter, Selected Essays, Boston, 1895, p. 155. 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 17 

lar effect on the one imaged; pouring out water produces 
rain. 

But the primitive savage, apart from his primitive sci- 
ence, treats his spirits exactly as he treats his human neigh- 
bours. When he wants a thing, he gets it either by coercion 
or by propitiation, as seems best. His spirits are just like 
his neighbours, neither beneficent nor inimical, but good or 
bad on occasion. Even in magical ceremonies the savage 
adopts the " religious attitude." 

The Australians are said to be without religion; at any 
rate they are chiefly concerned with magical ceremonies to 
produce increase of crops. To do this they recite charms. 
But prayer and propitiation are the outstanding features of 
this magic. They '* sing the horn," for example, and their 
song is a charm, but, like charm from carmen, the song 
invokes a power which has volition. When the Australian 
invokes lightning, he invokes what is to him a conscious 
being having a will to respond or not. He imagines volition 
even in a member of the body or in dust, because he cannot 
do otherwise, not yet having reached the point where he 
can think of matter in any other way. Especially anything 
lively enough to move is alive, and what is alive is, like him- 
self, a being with a will. But, even without apparent sign 
of life, any instrument is to him a will-possessing being. 
Thus, to punish a man who has stolen his wife, the Aus- 
tralian savage makes an instrument like a knife and " kneel- 
ing before it," a religious not coercive attitude, sings to 
it a request to kill the injurer. As Messrs. Spencer and 
Gillen say, " the magic (both the influence and the charmed 
object are called 'magic') is regarded as an evil spirit."^ 
In this " land without religion," eclipse is caused by an 
" evil spirit," a term not plainly defined but wavering be- 
tween a personal and impersonal power. 

There can be no clear understanding of the foundation 
of religion without the recognition of the fact that man has 

"^The Native Tribes of Central Australia, London, 1899, p. 549. 



1 8 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

passed through a stage where he still fails to discriminate 
between matter and spirit. Before a belief in freed spirits 
is possible, man must be able to abstract spirit from body. 
But, in the thought of the lowest savage, matter and spiritual 
power are so interrelated that there is no body without 
conscious power and no spirit without body. Even in com- 
paratively high religions, such as that of the Vedic poets 
of India, plough and drum are conscious volitive powers, 
as much so as the sun and other phenomena expressing 
active life and will. Samoyeds and Finns worship objects 
without recognition of spirit detached from a natural basis. 
Some Africans today are unable to distinguish between mat- 
ter and spirit. 

In view of these various considerations, we must start 
with the rejection of any theory that presupposes the pri- 
ority of either religion or magic ; that is, we must reject both 
the animism of Spencer, Tylor, Reville, and Jevons and the 
naturism of Pfleiderer and Menzies. The history of reli- 
gion cannot be traced back to a more complex psychosis 
than that of today's savage. But that savage shows that he 
cannot imagine in other phenomena what he does not recog- 
nize in himself. What he recognizes, the lowest savage, is 
a life-power or potency so diffused that all parts of the 
body possess their different " souls." His mind cannot dis- 
tinguish between soul and body or between subjective and 
6bjective. The object to which his vague mumblings of 
hope and fear are directed is neither god nor devil nor a 
power of any sort as a person ; it is rather the potency called 
mana or orenda. 

But it is not (and here even so clever a writer as Jane 
Harrison has failed to understand the matter) a special de- 
posit in an individual of any universal power. There is no 
such primitive fore-shadowing of pantheism. The savage 
thinks concretely; he does not generalize; above all he has 
never thought of orenda or mana as one universal power of 
which he and his rival and his object of devotion have each 
a part. His mana is his own; that of the chief or of the 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 19 

animal is theirs ; just as his physical strength and theirs are 
not the same strength. 

The Junglemen of Chota Nagpur are about as low intel- 
lectually as any savages. Their religious sense has been 
well summed up by a trained observer in these words: 
" The indefinite something which they fear and attempt to 
propitiate is not a person. The idea which lies at the root 
of their religion is that of power or rather of many powers, 
the shifting and shadowy company of unknown powers or 
influences making for evil rather than for good, which re- 
sides in the primeval forest, in the crumbling hills, in the 
rushing river, in the spreading tree; which gives its spring 
to the tiger, its venom to the snake, which generates jungle 
fever, and walks abroad in the terrible guise of cholera, 
smallpox, or murrain. Closer than this he does not define 
the object to which he offers his victim, or whose symbol 
he daubs with red at the appointed season. Some sort of 
power is there and that is enough for him." ^ 

So in fetishism and witchcraft there is not that antago- 
nism between fearing the inimical and propitiating the 
beneficent power which the theory of magic upholds; nor 
is the object sharply defined. But there is this in favour of 
the animistic theory, that whereas the mysterious object of 
religious regard in natural phenomena remains part of the 
indiscrete material-immaterial, in the case of soul in man or 
animal the savage argues from his own experience in 
dreams and hence believes in ghosts material but invisible, 
not visible-invisible as, for example, the waterfall-power. 

But it is of interest to see that even in the magical stage, 
where the power or potency is scarcely defined, the religious 
apparatus is already at work. At Seville one finds a ca- 
thedral where the altar in time past served as a refuge, in- 
violable because hedged with divinity, for the criminal ; un- 
approachable save to the initiate. There, too, to this day 
the priests still dance the recessional, unconsciously imitating 
savage precedents in both regards, and religious drama has 

1 Risley in Census for India, 1901, Part I, 352f. 



20 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

been enacted in mystery plays, as religious processions still 
reflect similar mysteries. That the participants believe in 
ghosts and spirits, in a future life, and a being above, is 
but another reflection from an immemorial past. 

For these traits are those characteristic of many primi- 
tive religions; they may be said to be the religious basis 
of the world. For first, as to the spiritual belief, even the 
Pygmies of Africa, who seem to have no other religious re- 
spect, believe in a life after death in the form of serpent- 
reincarnation and for three days weep and sing over their 
dead, though they have no fetishes, idols, or totems, and 
dance only for sport. Then the savages of Queensland, 
and the same is true of those of New Holland, believe in 
evil spirits, though they make no sacrifices and have no idols. 
In Tierra del Fuego the natives have scarcely a religious 
belief save in a sort of giant or man-god, who knows men's 
words and acts and influences the weather. Ordinarily a 
higher spirit, when recognized at all, is an inactive being, as 
among the Patagonians, who believe in evil spirits and a 
passive higher spirit, having apparently no other creed ex- 
cept the expectation of living after death in a pleasant 
grove. This expectation, however, is not by any means 
universal. Often it is found in regard to a few elect souls, 
but not for all. Elsewhere there is rank disbelief. Thus 
the Aru Islanders believe in spiritual powers, scarcely in 
spirits, but say pessimistically, mati matt sudah, " dead when 
dead (and that is) the end (of you)."' Compare the old 
Roman epitaphs with their non sum non euro. But usually 
there is a vague expectation of existence after death or the 
" expectation of a vague existence," such as that attributed 
to the Head-hunters of Borneo.^ 

The formal side of a religion which is still undeveloped 
is surprisingly illustrated in the case of the Australians. 
Here a people " without religion " in their magic ritual wear 

1 These savages change their religion according to their economic 
condition, those that have become agricultural adopting new spirits 
to suit their new way of living. 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 21 

masks to represent ancestral totems, as in some higher real 
religions, and act out what is virtually a religious drama or 
the prototype of drama. Then the cloistered implements 
of their ceremonies make the place where they are hidden 
a sort of holy ground, within which no slaughter may take 
place and from which the profane are barred. The ances- 
tors from whom they believe themselves descended are half- 
beast creatures, like the ancestor of the Athenians, Kekrops, 
who had a serpent-tail. They are said to believe in a pas- 
sive Big Man called Cutter-out or Maker (compare Toyiev<Sy 
a patristic title of the Creator), though it is not certain that 
he is their own invention. They believe in a double soul 
and in transmigration. Each man has a soul destined after 
death to pass into another body of man or beast of the 
same totem. This soul is duly mourned (the mourning 
rites also have analogues in higher religions) and is then 
driven away lest it annoy the survivors, a trait found in 
many other cases. But besides this soul there is another 
which is never incorporated. It accompanies the first in all 
its transmigrations, but is itself an undying soul. Another 
belief should be noticed in this regard. We think of totems 
as animal and vegetable, but the Australian totem-objects 
spiritized as powers include natural phenomena, such as sun 
and lightning. In the invocation to lightning, therefore, 
these savages stand on a plane uniting totemism and na- 
ture-worship. 

The more one studies religion the more natural it seems 
both in its origin and in its expression. There are innumer- 
able complex expressions of religion, but they are not mys- 
terious, though they appear to be so because they are inter- 
twined in a confusing way. But the savage with whom re- 
ligion begins is a simple fellow and as logical as one could 
expect.^ He sees himself face to face with mysterious pow- 
ers which (whom) he meets every day. Above all he faces 
two great mysteries, life and death. To these also, as to his 

^ Pace the school of the pre-logical savage, based on the idea that 
all mystery is pre-logical. 



22 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

daily objects of doubt or fear, he fries for safety's sake to 
adjust himself. Hence the almost universal element of the 
dance. For life comes through birth and the impulse to 
bring birth, be it of children, or of animals, or of grain, must, 
he thinks, be furthered by the same sensuous motions which 
he experiences in person and sees expressed even in animals. 
Peacocks, for example, in a suitable clime bring the mat- 
ing-dance before him. Hence the dance for productivity 
v^hich marks even the lowest savages. Thus the Aleuts, 
between Kamchatka and Alaska, have scarcely any reli- 
gious expression besides dancing naked on the snow with 
masks to prevent the ghosts from being seen. They bridge 
the birth-dance and the death-dance, for the latter is in 
honour of the ghosts, who incited thereby will bring pro- 
ductivity. Hence the dance at the grave as well as the 
dance for birth. But there is also another element in the 
dance. It intoxicates if pursued madly enough, and this 
intoxication, like that of liquor, makes the savage imagine 
himself possessed of a supernatural power. Hence, when 
the ghosts are to be ejected, they are best confronted by 
some one thus possessed, even if, as in Shamanism, the 
supernatural power is itself a ghostly power acquired by a 
ghost-controller. All the many secret societies of the savage 
have to do with natural mysteries interwoven with the tribal 
traditions. On th© question of primitive ethics as religious 
we shall speak later. 

Another characteristic of primitive religions is the out- 
ward expression of reverence by means of memorial stones. 
They are the prototypes of churches. But, unless the cause 
is known, errors are apt to be made in interpreting such 
stones. A Stonehenge may be the monument of sun-wor- 
shippers, but there are other stone circles which are like 
those of Stonehenge and yet have nothing to do with the 
sun. For example, there is a miniature stonehenge in Bur- 
mah, but it merely commemorates human activities. It is, 
too, a common practice among the Fiji Islanders to set up a 
stone in memory of every man eaten by oneself. One such 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 23 

cannibal has a record of nine hundred stones, which, set in 
a circle, might lead to the notion that it commemorated 
something quite different. 

In this chapter we have considered some general charac- 
teristics of primitive religions, man's attitude toward the 
spiritual world, the expression of that attitude through fear, 
entreaty, by means of dance and spell, and the primitive 
monument of religious significance, not only because we 
shall find them recurring again and again, but also because 
they show how the higher religions rest upon savage founda- 
tions ; not to belittle the higher, but on the contrary to let 
it be seen at the outset how these higher religions, though 
they rest upon the lower, have yet raised themselves far 
above their original level, and, conversely, how even in the 
lowest religions there is already, as if inherent in man's 
nature, the hope of something beyond this life and the faith 
in something higher than man. 

We turn now to the study of individual religions. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, New York, 1874-1 894. 

Sir J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, London, 1907-1915. 

C. P. Tiele, Outlines of the History of Religions, London, 

1877. 
Irving King, Development of Religion, New York, 1910. 
Andrew Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, London, 1899. 
R. R. Marett, The Threshold of Religion, London, 19 14. 
W. M. Wundt, Mythus und Religion, part of the Volkerpsy- 

chologie, Leipzig, 1906. 
Hutton Webster, Primitive Secret Societies, New York, 1908. 
Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central 

Australia, London, 1899. 
Lord Avebury, Marriage, Totemism, and Religion, London, 

1911. 



CHAPTER THREE 

AFRICAN RELIGIONS. I. SPIRIT-LORE 

Africa contains besides its Negroid population sundry dis- 
tinct races, the Pygmies and Bushmen, and mixed races, 
such as the partly Semitic Somalis, the partly Caucasian 
Nilotic tribes, and the Mongolian-Malay-Negro Malagasi 
or Hovas of Madagascar. Negroes more or less pure are 
the southern Bantus, the equatorial tribes, and those of the 
Gold and Slave Coasts on the west. The Hottentots are a 
mixture of Bushmen and Negro elements. 

Clearly influenced by foreigners are the Abyssinian 
Gallas. They worship trees and serpents, have a spring 
festival, and take omens from entrails. Somali ordeals, of 
boiling water and hot iron, may also be borrowed. In the 
West, the Yoruba-speaking Negroes, who may have Malay 
blood, have been in close contact with Semites, and their 
caste-gods, trade-gods, sacred fire, and cult of a sky- or 
lightning-god cannot be regarded as indubitably native. 
Their rest-day is the first day of the week because it is un- 
lucky, and since this is a native notion it may be original, 
as their local " souls" (of the head, stomach, toe, etc.) and 
some of their gods of phenomena are genuinely Negro. Of 
these, Olokun, sea-god, has a wife, Elusa, scaled from 
breasts to hips, like the fish-formed Polynesian sea-god and 
his Semitic counterparts. Their Orisha Oko is a love-god, 
whose messengers are bees, like those of the Hindu love- 
god ; but he is also a phallic garden-god of productivity, 
with a Yam festival of orgiastic character, in shape a 
veritable Priapus. 

So strong in some cases is the likeness between Negro 
and alien cults that borrowing is probable. The Nilotic 

24 



AFRICAN SPIRIT LORE 2$ 

Masai have even been regarded ^ as " primitive Semitic " ; 
but scholars have not generally accepted this conclusion. 

The southern Bushmen show the bond between culture 
and religion. They draw and paint well, are fond of song 
and dance, and have quite a mythology with higher poly- 
theistic traits, though they remain fetish-worshippers, and 
at the best are of low intelligence. They regard sun and 
moon as spirits and for the significant reason that *' they 
move, so they have life." It was a Bushman who, on see- 
ing a cart for the first time, worshipped it as a living thing 
and regarded the trailing smaller cart as the child of the 
larger one. They have been credited with an unaided belief 
in a " Master of Life " as a Creator, but this god 'Kaang re- 
ceives a licentious blood-dance as worship and is probably 
only a god of productivity. They dance and sing or shout, 
to scare away disease and other demons, and believe 
enough in a hereafter to place a spear in a warrior's grave 
and to mutilate themselves, amputating a finger- joint, to 
insure happiness in the next world. Like all Negroes, they 
wear talismans to keep off evil. They act out dramas with 
animal-head masks, which Stow calls Satyric, thus appear- 
ing like Egyptian gods. 

The Bantus include the Zulus who are more advanced. 
They revere the eagle but not as a totem.^ Their belief in 
soul is real but vague. The soul may be left about any- 
where. The shadow is a follow-soul. But ancestral souls 
are revered and even thanked for blessings and feared as 
illness-bringers. Souls may enter animals, and separate 
spirits of places exist. Feasts and dances are for joy and 
thanksgiving; silence and abstention from food guard 
against evil spirits. The Ekoi (Bantus) are said to have 
but two deities, sky and earth, but hosts of demons of trees, 
rivers, lakes, and hills. The Matabili (Zulu type) kill vic- 
tims for the use of the dead. Among the Wagiryama 

1 M. Merker, Die Masai, Berlin, 1904. 

2 Compare Macdonald, Journal Anth. Inst., vol. xx, on Zulu super- 
stitions. 



2.6 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Bantus there is a temple-prototype, not only a men's en- 
closure, sacred to them, but also a tree surrounded by a 
tabooed fetish-belt. The Ishogo Bantus of the French 
Congo have a taboo hut beside a sacred tree, which the 
Wapokomo Bantus make into a veritable bethel or god- 
house. The West African Bantus have the earth-mystery 
system of fetishism (see below) and a vague belief in a 
great spirit has arisen among the agricultural ^ Wakamba 
Bantus. Poison-ordeals and phallic cults are also known 
to them and they tattoo, but only decoratively. 

Birth-rites, rites of purification, and the worship of both 
ghosts and nature-spirits are characteristic of all these Ne- 
groes. The mixed Hottentot, perhaps partly Bantu, add 
a few features, moral fables of ghosts and animals, and the 
economic and religious superiority of women. Their 
women follow a pastoral life while men only hunt; the re- 
sult is that the women own the house and practically rule 
the men; among our Iroquois also the high position of 
women was due to their economic importance. Owing to 
pastoral conditions there is here closer and longer family- 
intercourse. Hence has come a higher development of 
moral qualities ; and from this, the attribution of such quali- 
ties to spirits. Thus the conception of kind spirits, to whom 
man should be grateful, is much more pronounced among 
the Hottentots than among Bushmen and pure Bantus. 
They have real gods as well as spirits, such as Tsuni-goam, 
a benevolent god, unfortunately of uncertain origin.^ He 
may be an ancestral ghost ; such ancestors are almost house- 

1 Agricultural life is apt thus to develop greater spiritual figures. 
The Western Bantus have secret societies, mysteries supported by 
temple priests, an esoteric language, initiation, etc., of an erotic 
character; but, like their totemism, these are less religious than 
social. The dance, which imitates a crane yet is performed by 
actors striped like zebras, shows how such a performance can arise 
without religious meaning. 

- Hahn interprets this " supreme god " as Dawn, which is doubt- 
ful. To Toosib, a sort of Neptune, are made prayers and' offerings. 
Heitsi-eibib is supposed by some to be the moon. He was " born 
of a virgin," who conceived him by sucking a stalk. 



AFRICAN SPIRIT LORE 27 

hold gods. But there are also clear nature-gods of storm 
and thunder; and bad demons, some certainly ghosts, and 
one supreme devil, against whom wizards and necromancers 
are employed. 

The seat of life among the equatorial Negroes is the 
liver, as blood from the liver of a goat seals blood-brother- 
hood. Here posts carved as rude figures mark graves, also 
marked by cairns, where cups are left, indicating belief 
in a future life. Cannibalism and fetishism occur, but are 
more pronounced among the western Negroes, to whom we 
shall turn immediately. First, however, we must inquire 
whether the Negro really has the conception of God, in dis- 
tinction from spirits and gods of local power. 

Among the pure western tribes called Ewe-speaking Ne- 
groes, the highest god is Mawu, the coverer, a god of rain 
or sky, with whom the Greek Ouranos and Indie Varuna 
have of course been compared. German missionaries found 
him and made him over into a supreme god, creator of all 
things, God ; whereas the natives held him as only one but 
the highest (physically) among many gods. Their " high- 
est " w^as simply topmost. Mawu was the upper god. 
They said he was too far away to care for sacrifice and 
seldom paid any attention to him, praying to him only when 
they wanted rain. He was so indifferent to man that he 
never punished; hence he was ** good." The African al- 
ways recognizes a being behind action, but he does not re- 
gard this being as naturally interested in man ; thus the low 
Basutos of the south-east never of themselves imagined that 
earth and sky might be the work of an invisible being. 
But Negroes are receptive and the idea once suggested is 
assimilated by them. No ancestor ever creates the world; 
he creates or begets only the family or clan. As we shall see 
in Polynesian religion, the savage regards the world rather 
as evolved than created and a ** creator " is either a fertility- 
spirit or a clan-ancestor. The " chief above " of Negroes, 
prior to the advent of missionaries, was either such a clan- 
ancestor or an active storm-spirit or rain-god. As a Zulu 



28 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Negro once said to Bishop Callaway (in the words of the 
Rig Veda, and of Horace : coelo tonantem credidimiis Jovem 
regnare), '* We know him because he thunders." But he 
did not think of this god as a spirit outside its own 
limited domain. He said to the Bishop : *' We do not 
know him or his laws ; we know only that he strikes when 
man offends. We worship only tribe-spirits," In general, this 
is true, the ancestor or tribe-spirit is the chief African god. 

Some tribes of Nyassa acknowledge each its own rain- 
maker, here the ancestral spirit. The Hereras of Damara- 
land recognize no higher spirit than this. Their apparent 
" tree-sacrifice " is made not to the tree but, through 
twigs taken from a tree sacred to ancestors and hung 
up at the place of sacrifice, to their highest ghost-spirit. 
It is invariably due to the missionary when an ancestor- 
spirit is taken as a creative sky-spirit. The sky-spirit, 
usually lightning, never creates ; he only destroys. The 
great Unkulunkulu (or Munku-Unkulu) of the Zulus was 
originally an androgynous ancestor and was converted into 
^' God " about 1835 by Captain Gardiner. The Hottentots 
too had no notion of God, and "there is no God in the 
Kongo" (Bentley ap. Keane). On this whole topic Bishop 
Callaway is still much more authoritative than the later 
writers who visited the natives after missionaries had in- 
doctrinated them. He says (in his Unkulunkulu, p. 105) : 
" Nothing is more easy than to enquire of heathen savages 
the character of their creed and during the conversation to 
impart to them great truths and ideas which they never 
heard before, and presently to have these come back again, 
as articles of their own original faith." 

We take up now the closely related cults of the Negroes 
of the West Coast, where also this God-idea has been predi- 
cated of the Ashantis, who, however, are less advanced than 
the Dahomians, as these in turn are less advanced than the 
Yoruba-speaking Negroes. But the Dahomy cult is the first 
to offer even slight ground for such a belief, and that has 
been influenced by missionaries, as has been the cult of 



AFRICAN SPIRIT LORE 29 

Nzambi, the mother-spirit, confused now with that of the 
Virgin. 

Herbert Spencer's theory that nature-gods come from 
ghosts has been abundantly disproved as a universal propo- 
sition by a close examination of the religion of Ashanti and 
Dahomy. As Ellis says, '* it is a theory not warranted by 
the evidence" {Yoruhas, p. 282). But Ellis himself is in 
error because, though he rejects one system, he follows an- 
other, that of animism. Not ghosts but confined spirits are 
his fetish. So he regards the worship of a tree as neces- 
sarily implying the cult of a tree-spirit " put into it by 
priests." But in discussing the western Negroes, we must 
distinguish the Guinea (Tshi-speaking) Negroes from the 
Dahomians. The Fanti and Ashanti of the Gold Coast and 
Slave Coast, respectively, with other Ashantis living inland 
as one state under a king (whereas the Fanti live in severed 
communities without political union), make the so-called 
Tshi-speakers ; while east of the Fanti and Ashanti and 
north of the Slave Coast live the Ewe-speaking Dahomians,^ 
who have a still more developed centralized government. 

The Guinea Negroes are all characterized by totem-wor- 
ship, religious cannibalism, moon-cult, and fetishism. The 
last is by far the most important and hence is treated below 
in a separate section. The segregated Fanti have both vege- 
table and animal totems; their highest objects of devotion 
are the vegetable silk-cotton tree and the python. They 
have one real god. But the Dahomians, who have a royal 
house and realm-idea, have developed further the idea of 
gods or spirits of a higher and more comprehensive order. 
In the Fanti villages, each community has its own separate 
power or spirit; in Dahomy these similar powers or spirits 
of the separate communities have coalesced into one, withal 
one having power and dignity commensurate with his 

1 Col. Ellis (see the Bibliography) calls these groups Tshi, Ewe 
(pronounced efe) speakers as contrasted with the Yoruba-speak- 
ers. It will be simpler to remember the groups as Guinea and 
Dahomy Negroes, the former again as (kingly) Ashantis and 
(quasi democratic) Fantis. 



30 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

physical expansion. In Dahomy, too, were brought the 
greater sacrifices, of thousands of human captives slaugh- 
tered and eaten, either in thanksgiving for victory or to 
give a suitable retinue to warriors who had died.^ One sees 
how intimate is the connection here between religion and 
the social group. The bigger the state, the bigger the god, 
compounded of various gods ; the bigger the god's province, 
the less local, confined, his activity. His comprehensive- 
ness tends to make him more abstract. Again, the bigger 
the state and its god, the bigger the sacrifice, just as the 
Amazons of Dahomy represent what is found elsewhere 
on a small scale but is here exaggerated into a female army. 

It was from the West Coast (Dahomy) Negroes that 
Voodoo came to America and the Obeah or Wanga cult to 
Hayti. Wanga is not necessarily " tied to the snake," and 
is less informal; Voodoo requires a priest, a priestess, and 
a snake, or it is no real Voodoo, a word meaning fearful. 
Red Voodoo requires human victims ; white Voodoo is con- 
tent with a cock or goat ; while Wanga does not " show 
blood " but acts through poison.^ 

The primitive Guinea powers or spirits of the Fanti and 
Ashanti are generally malignant; worship is due to fear 
but also to hope of advantage. The kinds of " spirits " are 
quite clearly sundered and as these are perhaps the most 
primitive native or untouched classes of spiritual powers, 
they are of special interest and importance. First, there is 
the indifferent " tribal spirit " ; second, the local or group- 
spirit bearing the significant name Boshum, " evil-doer " ; 
third, the family-spirit; and fourth, the Suhman or spirit 
revered only by one individual. This may be a fetish or Kra 

1 The Grand Custom slays personal attendants at a king's death ; 
the Annual Custom slays others to renew the retinue. They are 
celebrated with music and dance. The Dahomians also " convey a 
message " through a man slaughtered for this purpose, who will tell 
the ancestors the news, a trait of Shamanism. 

2 The difference is explained by Miss Kingsley, West African 
Studies, pp. 139, 219. Two religious customs, like those, of the 
Hindu, one of suttee called lemba, and one of infant marriage, an 
Igalwa, West African, custom, are possibly not of native origin. 



AFRICAN SPIRIT LORE 3^ 

(see below). To the local power, of river, hill, or water, 
children are sacrificed, to make it beneficent. Offerings are 
also made to the family-spirit, which, though kind, may 
cause disease, sterility, and death. In so far as these are 
nature-forms they seem to act as such, not as confining a 
spirit. There is thus a general, once local, southern thun- 
der-spirit of rain, called Bobowissi; but he is less a spirit 
than thunder-and-rain. His northern counterpart Tando, 
however, is a real spirit (Ashanti "hater") and has a wife, 
a river-spirit, to whom the crocodile is sacred. Seven men 
and seven women are slaughtered to Tando amid ritual 
carousing. There is also a Guinea " ogre of blood, red earth 
and earth-quake," and a female monster, namely the malig- 
nant silk-cotton tree, Srahmatin. To Ellis these are all 
" spirits," but it is questionable whether the powers are not 
rather inherent in the matter than separate from it. An 
interesting developmicnt has taken place in the case of Bobo- 
wissi. This intangible power above has been virtually sup- 
planted by Brahfo, his adjutant, who now lives on earth in 
a grove, where the priests can handle him. He is the only 
general Gold Coast god. 

In Dahomy, the Fanti and Ashanti powers, each sepa- 
rate, have been united into one power of each class. Not 
this stream-power and that stream-power are individually 
recognized, but a water-spirit or god of water, etc. This is 
due to the greater state-idea aided by an organized priest- 
hood, for on the Gold Coast there are only separate priests 
of each village. But the most interesting Gold Coast novelty 
IS the Kra. When a man dies, his ghost, Srahman, goes to 
ghost-land, where it lives in a ghost- forest with ghost-sheep, 
etc. There all is as on earth, only pale and shadowy: 
" One day on earth is better than a year in Srahman-dazi " 
(ghost-land), says a Tshi-speaker proverb. But while the 
Srahman goes thither, the man's Kra or independent spirit 
goes abroad as a Sisa, wandering free, or at once seeks 
another man's body. If it tries to enter a man already pos- 
sessed by a Kra, the man has a fit. Once in, if it tries to 



32 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

get out, the man sneezes ; hence, '' good health " is said 
then. Everything, man, sheep, tree, has this double soul, 
not to speak of the shadow, which is also a soul, perhaps 
man's first follower, and the soul which is located in an 
animal while belonging to a man, that is, the bush-soul. 

The cult of souls is sharply sundered from that of nature- 
powers or spirits, which are generally malevolent, while 
soul-spirits are friendly neighbours placated only as being 
naturally ready to help their own family. In Dahomy, the 
dead are " watch-family " spirits, usually of amiable char- 
acter. 

The sacrificial scale was originally man, bullock, sheep, 
and fowl. When drink is offered, evaporation " shows that 
the spirit has taken the offering." In the case of meat, the 
spirits take only the " spiritual part." Rum, oil, eggs, and 
fowl are the food of the lesser spirits that dwell in objects 
placed among taboo trees. The gods mentioned above, 
Bobowissi and Tando, were originally local malignant spir- 
its demanding great bloodshed, and sacrifice to them is 
typical; it is always apotropaic. The great god is here 
never confused with the great dead chief, though the lat- 
ter may become a genius loci. Only in Dahomy are the 
bones of the dead collected, invoked, and preserved. Here, 
as the indwelling spirit of this or that stream becomes a 
general water-god, so there is also a general love-god, a 
general lightning-god who, as in America, is represented 
as a thunder-bird. He even has wives, hierodoulai, who 
care for his shrine. To Legba, the love-god, are sacrificed 
goats, dogs, and cocks, and circumcision is a rite in his 
honour, while obscene mysteries are performed in his name. 
Rainbow,^ Fire, Water, etc., are here real gods. Trances 

1 The Rainbow, as serpent, is also the underground snake that 
drinks up the water on earth. The python-snake gives wisdom, 
but he is also a god of treasure and of sensuality, his " wives " 
being especially debauched. It is impossible here even to mention 
the names of all the Dahomy gods. The Sun marries the Moon; 
stars are their children. There is a war-god, a wind-god, etc. 
Small-pox is a malignant fiend. Four kings of Dahomy have lately 



AFRICAN SPIRIT LORE 33 

are entered into by priests to influence ancestral ghosts to 
help their descendants, also a shamanistic cult. Priestesses 
of these gods are called their wives. 

Few gods are personified enough to have other wives than 
priestesses. There is little morality in divinity ; the tendency 
is to revere more the more evil or harmful spirits, on the 
principle of the Yezedis, who worship the Devil because 
only Satan would injure them. 

Some of the Negroes, instead of burying, float their dead 
on a stream ; but it is not clear that they have the common 
idea of one wide river to cross, which appears in American 
eschatology, Redskin and Mexican, and has a Malay variant, 
also American, according to which the soul flounders in 
a swamp till it perishes or finds egress. Usually corpses are 
buried. Among the Bongos, men are buried facing north, 
women facing south ; while the Niam-niam lay the man with 
the head eastward; the woman, westward. The Fans and 
Westerners eat their dead ; but few tribes do so regularly as 
food. Cannibalism here begins as a religious rite. 

Of minor religious importance are the following Guinea 
practices. After birth, fowls are sacrificed to the head-soul, 
seven days after for a girl, nine for a boy, and both mother 
and child are baptized with water which has stood before 
the gods, while the priest repeats the child's name three 
times, for three and seven are religious numbers. Real, not 
hired, mourners may not wash for three days. On the 
third day after death the dead man is three times asked to 
depart. The groping Srahman soul of the Ashanti is guided 
by a sacrificed fowl to ghost-land. No washing or hair- 
cutting is allowed till the third day, when the head is shaved. 
This is to keep the ghost away. There is a general rite for 
the dead once a year, at which the dead of the past three 
years are all lamented and asked to protect the tribe. Red 

been " deified," two for their goodness and two for their cruelty. 
The chief facts are that real gods anyway are found only in Dahomy 
and nature-gods are not confused with ancestors, who have differ- 
ent abodes, etc. 



34 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

is for mourning; white for rejoicing. Cross-roads harbour 
evil spirits. The spirit-voice is " bird-Hke," an incompre- 
hensible twitter. The Tshi-speaking priest is called a 
" dancer." He is carefully trained to show inspiration, 
" eye rolling and mouth foaming." Each god has a special 
hymn and dance (compare the Salii). Music among the 
Wanik " draws the spirit " ; but it is also a means of exor- 
cism. The Gold Coast prophetess is inspired from the grave 
near which she dwells. There are two forms of " mother " 
worship, one of the snake-mother of mankind and one of a 
productivity-spirit called Mother, whom the Gallas call 
Atatie, perhaps an earth-spirit. The earth-spirit is some- 
times represented by a log-image. On the West Coast, 
Odudua is the " nursing earth," wife of Obatala, an Olarun 
demi-urge converted into " God " by the missionaries, who 
did not know that his wife was the representative of sensu- 
ality. These " life " spirits are usually celebrated with 
sexual orgies. In connexion with the mysteries of the same 
sort is practised circumcision, practically a tribe-initiation 
ceremony.^ Rites for girls show, however, that the spirit- 
element is as strong as the social. 

Ordeals of fire show no special traits ; ^ as usual, they 
test chastity. Well represented is the local " soul " idea. 
That is, a special life-power resides in each part of the 
body, such as hair or nails, and especially in blood and 
spittle. Among the Jagga, for example, because spittle is 
such a soul-holder, the polite host spits on his departing 
guest, as who should say, " I present you with a little 

1 Circumcision is also practised in British East Africa, where the 
rite is usually performed at the age of sixteen, though the boy may 
be younger and is sometimes two or three years older. In all these 
cases the rite itself is a tribal initiation-ceremony, religious in so 
far as the youth is thus infused with the spirit-power of the tribe. 
This is indicated also by the " new birth," which often is drastically 
represented, and which reappears in higher religions as regenera- 
tion. So in India one becomes " reborn " on entering the caste- 
order. 

2 Compare on the fire-ordeal, Ellis, The Tshi-speaking Peoples of 
the Gold Coast of West Africa, London, 1887, p. 138. 



FETISHISM 35 

power." So spittle is mingled with a goat's blood for sacri- 
fice and is curative. Bone, blood, and grave-dust commin- 
gled make '' medicine " to harm a foe and is buried under 
his threshold. Toe-nails and bones of European saints still 
conserve a similar power, but not quite the same; for the 
saint's mana was a general power, not sub-divided into souls 
as separate powers. 

AFRICAN RELIGION. II. FETISH AND IDOL 

Fetishism is not a religion but the expression of a mental 
attitude. Fear and hope sway man. Taboo is the religious 
expression of fear; fetishism, of hope. Applied originally 
to the talismans of Portuguese sailors, the word fetish ^ 
means a charm to bring luck. Many writers use the word 
loosely to indicate any material object from which, like a 
mascot, the savage expects good luck ; but properly a fetish 
is portable and it is unlike a mascot in that it possesses power 
and will to bless. Hence it is coddled, abused, prayed to 
and stormed at, exactly as one would treat a recalcitrant 
spirit who may or may not aid. 

But at this point there is a very general error to be cor- 
rected. All the scholars of the animistic school say that a 
fetish contains a spirit. On the contrary, the primitive 
fetish is itself a quasi-personified power or potency. It is 
a spiritual power; it does not contain a spirit. The object 
itself, even when a collection of objects, has, as a whole, 
volition. It is almost impossible for the savage not to im- 
part will to anything which appears to be an entity. Even 
his monda, which is apparently an unconscious object, is 
treated, like the grisgris^ joujou, mokissos, as a conscious 
volitive power. 

Even when the fetish will not work and is abandoned, it 

1 Literally factitious, feitigo (fetish) was the sailor's own amulet, 
and by him transferred to the similar charms he saw the Negro 
wear. The word fetichisme was used by Bosman in his Description 
of Guinea in 1705 and was popularized by De Brosses in his Du 
Culte des Dieux fetiches in 1760. 



Z^ THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

often retains sanctity enough to be preserved in god-boxes. 
In Siberia (for fetishes are found everywhere) a metal 
plate is worn as a fetish on the ground that it is old and 
" therefore knows more." A natural divinity is often 
treated exactly like a fetish. Thus Xerxes first beat the 
Hellespont and then rewarded it with gifts, as Herodotus 
(vii, 35 f.) tells us. 

But even in West Africa, where fetishism is at its best, 
there is danger of being led astray. Miss Kingsley, in her 
excellent West African Studies, divides the local fetishism 
into " schools." One of these stresses the art of maintain- 
ing life, a sort of medical school ; the second is chiefly con- 
cerned with the future life, a sort of divinity school; the 
third is devoted to material prosperity, a business college; 
and the fourth is academic, a school of philosophy, " mainly 
concerned with the worship of the mystery of the power of 
Earth." These schools are not tribal divisions, nor secret 
societies, Poorah, which are a manifestation of fetish law- 
form. 

But when she speaks of fetish-schools, Miss Kingsley 
means the different forms which religion takes in its prac- 
tical application to life, for she calls all religious phenomena 
" fetish." Thus religious activity in the Tshi and Ewe 
school is hygienic ; in the Calabar school at Oil Rivers the 
chief object of interest is reincarnation ; the Mpongwe school 
looks out for worldly prosperity ; and the Fjort or Nkissi 
school is philosophic. But all these schools are more or less 
occupied with the interest of each. There is no sharp divi- 
sion between them ; the " school " distinction is largely hypo- 
thetical and in any case there is nothing to be gained by call- 
ing all religion fetishism. 

In West Africa fetishism is the dominating religious fac- 
tor. Despite all spirit-phenomena, the fetishes " almost 
monopolize religious thought," as Dr. Nassau expresses it. 
The love-philter or the charm for fishing is moreover not 
only the chief object of invocation ; it is per se a potency. 
As the same writer also says, the idea of a spirit in the 



FETISHISM 37 

fetish as the efficient agent is a later development. Count- 
less examples prove this assertion. 

Thus in employing a war-fetish made of bark, not a spirit 
but the tree itself is addressed : " Thou tree, let not the 
bullets hit me." The fisherman says, to his fetish-mess, 
** let me catch fish." In the same v^ay a lost girdle, though 
not a fetish, is directly addressed as a sentient being: 
" Girdle, come back." The animistic explanation adopted 
by Dr. E. B. Tylor has led him to define fetishism as '' the 
doctrine of spirits embodied in, or attached to, or conveying 
influence through, certain material objects." ^ Yet the same 
author's previous discussion brought out clearly the fact 
that many fetishes are not controlled by spirits. Indeed, 
Dr. Tylor himself admits that he has *' selected " his exam- 
ples to illustrate his definition. Of course there may be 
a fetish not one with the object. Thus the Eskimo kills a 
baby or an animal and carries its dried skin, that the mana 
inherent in the animal, and still working in the skin, may 
help him to game. This might be regarded as a spirit, more 
properly power, in the fetish ; it is the animal power in a re- 
duced form. But the usual fetish, a pebble, a bit of bark, 
or a combination of natural objects, is regarded as in itself 
potent and conscious. 

The natural, not the artificial, object is the primitive fetish. 
Ellis's opinion, that the fetish was originally a deified power 
of nature and that all tangible fetishes are priestly impos- 
tures, is impossible to accept. Romer in 1769 recorded a 
typical case that had come under his own observation. It 
is worth more than all modern theories : A Negro went out 
in the morning intent on effecting escape from danger. He 
stumbled on a stone, picked it up, and escaped safely. From 
that stone he never parted, but kept it as his helper and 
saviour. What has preceded good-luck is (post hoc propter 
hoc) the cause of good-luck. If thereafter it fails to act, 
it may be placated or forced to behave itself. This too, 

'^Primitive Culture, New York, 1874, II. i45f. 



38 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

though denied by Ellis, is indisputable. It is exactly the 
attitude taken by Egyptians and Greeks toward their gods. 
Even the later Romans destroyed the temples to punish the 
gods on the death of Germanicus. So also in the seven- 
teenth century a crew of becalmed Portuguese sailors tied 
their patron St. Anthony to the bowsprit till he sent a 
breeze. A Spanish captain once tied the Virgin to" the mast 
with the same intent.^ There is, however, another element 
to be considered, which looks somewhat like simple abuse, 
but it is not. Thus St. Peter's image was once immersed, in 
the sixteenth century, to cure a drought in France. This 
may have been a case of sympathetic magic, wetting the saint 
to cause him to wet the earth. But there are cases enough to 
show that abuse is reckoned a proper way to control a spir- 
itual power. Russian peasants beat their holy pictures with 
no other idea. So, as narrated in Kotzebue's Reise nach 
Rom, the Neapolitans abused San Gennaro, because he failed 
to stop the lava flowing toward the city. They even called 
him vecchio ladrone, hirhone, and beat him. 

The highest religions become fetishistic when a power is 
supposed to inhere in a material object, though will-power 
is no longer imagined in it. Thus a piece of the cross or 
Koran invested with miraculous power for good is practi- 
cally a fetish. This fetish-idea of a material power bring- 
ing luck survives when the southern American Negro car- 
ries a rabbit- foot, or the farmer's boy a potato or chestnut, 
or when one nails up a horseshoe, the iron and circular form 
making the last named a powerful fetish. In all these cases 
the original thought has been lost; what remains is simply 
the fetish-idea, the apparently ineradicable idea that man is 
dependent upon some power not his own for blessings, in 
the hope of attaining which he worships or treasures the 
luck-giver. 

A.S a completed complex system in the hands of a priest- 
hood, African fetishism is rank with evil. The priest, who 

^ For these and similar cases, compare Roskoff, p. 140, and Schultze 
pp. 130, 17s (see Bibliography). 



FETISHISM 39 

is a witch-hunter, uses the belief in fetish to acquire wealth 
and power, intimidating and convicting of murder at will 
through fetish-oracles which he controls. One fetish set 
against another is an element in political advancement. A 
great chief controls many fetishes and therewith assumes 
many obligations. For, as rain-maker, for example, he is 
responsible for rain, and if his fetish will not work, the 
people are liable to punish him, as he would punish the 
fetish. Hence intrigues, indictments, slaughters. The 
private fetish aids its owner in finding a foe as well as a 
fish, and " smells out " the injurer, the thief, the adulterer. 
But where fetishism is systematized in priestly hands, this 
power is no longer in the hands of the simple savage indi- 
vidual, but in those of the crafty Negro priest, who makes 
the fetish act as detective, judge, and executioner. A good 
example of this is the cassia fetish, or bitter water, familiar 
to us from the Mosaic law, where, however, it acts as agent 
of a higher power. In Africa it acts for itself, or, in fact, 
for the priests. But the victim and the ordinary savage 
do not know that the priest is exploiting them. To them, the 
cassia is a sentient moral power pursuing a criminal and 
giving judgment from which there is no appeal. The Si- 
berian peasants beside Lake Baikal have a holy mountain 
which acts in the same way. If a man is suspected of per- 
jury, he has to climb the holy hill. No spirit of the hill 
hurts him, but if guilty he dies on the spot, the hill itself 
being a moral sentient power punishing the perjurer. 

There is then a marked ethical content in fetishism. In 
Africa every law is put under the protection of a fetish, 
which guards the law as another fetish guards an individual 
or a village. The fetish (in theory at least, for we here 
ignore priestly craft) guards law and righteousness till, in 
the course of development, a higher power directs '' the bit- 
ter water that causeth the curse " (Numbers v. i8). So, too, 
in witchcraft-trials the Lord was thought to cause the witch 
to float or sink; but in simpler belief the pure water itself 
rejects or casts up the guilty. If then the fetish does not 



40 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

injure the innocent, if it defends the right, if to it untruth, 
murder, and adultery are, as it were, abhorrent, then it is 
clear that fetishism may be regarded as an initial stage to- 
ward a belief in a benevolent and moral power. As a mat- 
ter of fact, the priest-controlled fetish does injure the inno- 
cent; but even higher religions swerve from rectitude when 
priests use them for their own ends. Fear, too, and not love 
influences the fetish-worshipper. But that also is a second- 
ary stage. For it is not fear which first inspires the sav- 
age's belief in the fetish. It is the hope of attaining a de- 
sired aim and the idea that the fetish will bring him to it. 
One of these aims is to kill the injurer. Then the injurer, 
who shares the belief, is filled with fear. In a word, fetish- 
ism recognizes an ethical power which it is hoped will lead to 
the establishment of truth among other aims. The fetish is, 
so to speak, the agent of morality in detecting sin ; it never 
detects virtues. 

A form of so-called fetishism gives purification. Sav- 
ages have never distinguished between ill and evil. . Purga- 
tive waters cleanse, hence purify; that is, they renew the 
weakened virtue or power of a man. Water thus becomes, 
as a fetish-object in a broader sense, a national purifier, 
often a " war-fetish " before battle, when virtue or power 
is most needed, or again an annual purifier, to cleanse and 
renew after a year's waste. Our Creeks had such a national 
annual purgation ; in Africa the water-fetish serves as war- 
medicine. But fetish is not really the word to use here. 

Fetishes are not usually specialized. They help in vari- 
ous ways, but sometimes are used in one shape for one pur- 
pose. The Jamaica Obeah still gives both oracles and im- 
munity from wounds. But the Hayti Chemi, little figures, 
a sort of teraphim, are mainly oracular though also gener- 
ally preservative. Obeah and Chemi both came first from 
Africa. The " fetish of faithlessness," buried under the 
Dahomy threshold, causes faithless wives to suffer exactly 
as described in the Mosaic " law of jealousy " ; but the same 
fetish has other uses. There is another religious element 



FETISH AND IDOL 4^ 

which has a counterpart in fetishes. This is the depriva- 
tions and hardships to which the worshipper binds himself, 
or to which his parents have bound him as a child. The 
saints of our church never were more particular in fasting 
and self-castigation than is the African fetish-worshipper. 
At birth he is pledged to do or not to do certain trivial 
things, like stepping over a stream, wearing long hair, spar- 
ing some animal, not eating some food; or he takes such 
vows upon himself. But in either case nothing will induce 
him to break the obligation. The vows seem to have no 
connection with morality (most of them are silly), yet they 
themselves are moral, since the idea of renunciation and of 
fidelity to a vow is there. The poor Negro " binds him- 
self " ; he has a bond, a religion in the sense of obligation. 
It is ethical misconduct to repudiate his vow.^ 

The distinction between a fetish and an idol is formal. 
At the extremes there is a difference, but there is a point 
where idol and fetish coalesce. Behind the fairest Greek 
statue lies the idol, behind that the carved log. The Damara 
ancestral fetish is a bough from a tree sacred to the ances- 
tor ; while in Korea we find a log with a rounded top, proto- 
type again of the true idol. Earlier than this may be the 
sacred ground, such as that where the Australian Churinga 
are stored, though as in Lappland and Africa it may be the 
fetish that makes the ground holy. Fetishes sprinkled with 
oil, rum, or blood are treated as idols are treated. Gener- 
ally, however, the idol works for the group while the fetish 
works for its owner alone. But the fetish may operate for 
the group, as in Polynesia, where, once a year, the fetish- 

1 Ames, Psychology of Religious Experience, Boston, 1910, p. 
131, holds that primarily "the only misconduct was breach of 
custom." This is according to the taboo-interpretation of religion 
and ignores the individual as he should not be ignored. So sacrifice 
is not merely a redintegration of the group and valuable only in 
consolidating the social union. The single fetish-worshipper has his 
private purgation and sacrifice which seem to be as primitive as the 
tribal rites. 



42 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

stone works like a national god ^ through the king for the 
people. Also the Thugs' pickax in India is a tribal fetish. 
Phallic stones in India are true fetishes, but they become 
idols when carved to represent the god himself. Phallic ele- 
ments were in the American " medicine " and probably in 
the Roman bulla. They imparted power. 

Many savages have no idols, Bushmen, Patagonians, 
Veddas, Andamanese, and Australians, for example; but 
Saussaye is wrong in saying that in the lowest stage of sav- 
agery idolatry is " altogether lacking." The savage of the 
lower Amazon has carved figures on his canoe and, as we 
have seen, some of the lowest Africans have rude post- 
idols. In the '' banana zone " idols are common, represent- 
ing men and animals caricatured, often without arms or legs. 
Apotropaic pictures and figures of the gods adorn the huts 
or boats of Redskin and Polynesian. Even the prehistoric 
art in the caves of France may, as Reinach has suggested, be 
for magical purposes. Yet not necessarily so, for primitive 
art may exist without such intent. The Eskimos during the 
winter make pictures, but not idols, nor are their pic- 
tures religious. Eventually higher religions usually adopt 
idols. Thus idols abound in India after the sixth century 
B. c, and perhaps before ; there are possible allusions to 
idols in the earliest literature. Greece had idols before 
Homer, and Homer's statue of the goddess, though unique, 
is prayed to as an idol.^ But the highest religions again dis- 
card idols and pictures as objects of worship, to which even 
some Greeks objected. Mohammed discarded both; while 
the Roman Church has expressly forbidden (since ySy a. d.) 
the worship of images. Ancestors and saints in pictured or 
imaged form are found in India and China and probably 
the Roman funeral masks represent ancestors. Ancient 
Egypt and modern New Zealand prefer images of ances- 

iLike a god, too, It is kept wrapped up, except on the annual 
occasion of manifestation. 

2 For non-idolatrous races, see D'Alviella, Des origines de 
I'idolatrie in the Revue de I'histoire des religions, xii. 2. 



FETISH AND IDOL 43 

tors ; China prefers pictures. India painted and carved, in- 
differently, gods, men, horses, and dogs and worshipped 
every image it saw. Abbe Dubois could not determine 
whether his Hindus worshipped the " actual substance " or 
the divinity in the idol. It is merely a matter of intelli- 
gence. Louis XL worships the lead doll on his hat, as the 
Hindu peasants adore any carved figure. Only an intelligent 
person distinguishes between symbol and symbolized. The 
foreigner may make a mistake here. The Roman thought 
the Quadi worshipped their swords; in reality they wor- 
shipped the divinity carved thereon. So a Punjabi today has 
piija (worship)^ apparently of a sword though really of the 
goddess embossed on it. So, too, the ancient sword-dance 
was in Tiu's honour, not an idle exhibition of skill. 

A fetish, like a god, may be no more than the means of a 
meal and worshipped as such, for hunger is a powerful stim- 
ulator of religious feeling. But it is not hypocrisy when 
the Hindu clerk today bows to his pen in the morning as 
his means of livelihood. He worships it as the farmer wor- 
ships his plough and as the Toda worships his buffaloes; 
the implement of a living is a means of life and that is di- 
vine. Habakkuk remarked on this long ago (i. i6) : " He 
sacrificeth unto his net and burneth incense unto his drag, 
because by them his portion is fat and his meat plenteous." 

The unimportant question as to whether fetish-figures or 
idols were originally stone or wood, must be settled for 
every place separately.^ The important question whether 

^ Puja indicates both veneratio (doulia) and latrio. A superior 
man or a god receives it. The missionary might compromise on 
it as a sign of respect, not necessarily " worship," yet actually wor- 
ship when applied to a god, a most convenient word. 

2 See especially the chapters on Greece and India and America. 
Here need be mentioned only the Lappland Saidas, made indiffer- 
ently of stone or wood. When such a Saida, image, is of wood it 
is a sort of inverted xoanon, that is, it is a tree-trunk placed 
upside down, so that the roots represent head and hair. The stone 
Saida is a veritable herm, rudely outlined, standing in the open, 
which then is holy ground. Saussaye says "only by consecration 
does the inanimate image receive divine power " ; but he forgets the 



44 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

the fetish-log and idol are originally apotropaic images 
i. e., spiritual scarecrows, must be raised but cannot be an- 
swered categorically. The Hindu Rajput sometimes wears, 
or carries, an image of his ancestor, which originally he wor- 
shipped as the image of a beneficent ghost; but now- 
adays this image is regarded merely as an amulet to keep 
off ghosts and evil spirits.^ This is an historical exam- 
ple of the way a ghost may become a defender; it needs 
only a step to make him as defender rather a fearful or 
scarecrow type, as described by Horace {Sat. i. 8) : Olim 
truncus eram Hculus . , . deus inde furum aviumque 
Maxima formido. The connection, however, is close be- 
tween the saint or Greek god who guards his state, and the 
images of the Aru Islanders, who " preserve the house from 
evil spirits by figures of snakes, lizards, crocodiles, and 
human forms, on a post, and an image of wood rudely 
formed." ^ Such guardians are the Assyrian Shedu who 
keep the way to the palace ; possibly also the Lagash cones 
(so Heuzey) ; but these have also been interpreted as votive 
offerings, conventionalized figurines of deities (Jastrow). 
Terminal stones appear at times to have been of this nature, 
demoniac forms to frighten, rather than protecting gods. 
But as a general theory of the origin of idols the apotropaic 
explanation will not suffice. For in the ante-idol stage of 
the African fetish-log, the primary notion is not that of a 
frightful form. In fact, when it is smeared with oil and 
blood, the chief purpose of such a graven log is to attract 
benevolent spirits, who come to lick the blood and oil and re- 
main, taking up their abode in so attractive an object. 

Saida, which is not consecrated and is divine, though not per se, 
since its power is that of the Saivos or gods. 

1 Sir John Malcolm, Central India, London, 1823, i. p. 144. 

2 D. H. Kolff, Voyages of the Dutch Brig of War Dourga, Lon- 
don, 1840. 



FETISH AND IDOL 45 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Mary H. Kingsley, West African Studies, London, 1897; 

Travels in West Africa, 1899. 
G. W. Stow, The Native Races of South Africa, New York, 

1905. 
Col. A. B. Ellis, The Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast 

of West Africa, London, 1887; The Ewe-speaking Peoples 

of the Slave Coast, London, 18^0; The Yoruba-speaking 

Peoples of the Slave Coast, London, 1894. 
R. H. Nassau, Fetichism in West Africa, New York, 1904. 
Fritz Schultze, Der Fetischismus, Leipzig, 187 1. 
R. E. Dennett, Notes on the Folklore of the Fjort, London, 

1898. 
A. H. Keane, Man Past and Present, Cambridge, 1899. 
F. Ratzel, The History of Mankind, London, 1896-1898. 
Gustav Roskoff, Das Religionswesen der rohesten Naturvolker, 

Leipzig, 1880. 
Goblet d'Alviella, Hibbert Lectures for 1891, London, 1892. 
Jerome Dowd, The Negro Race, New York, 1907. 



CHAPTER FOUR 

RELIGIONS OF AINUS AND SHAMANS 
NATURISM AND ANIMISM 

Thus far we have seen that savage belief in superhuman 
powers is expressed either by the worship of a free spirit, 
which may be a ghost, or by the worship of a material but 
supposedly sentient willing object. It is often difficult to 
decide which, for one or both of two reasons. The savage 
is wont to express himself vaguely. His attitude, again, is 
interpreted according to a preconceived opinion. In Africa 
there are certainly both those who worship ghosts, and these 
seem to be in the majority, and those who worship natural 
and artificial objects as if they were spiritual beings; but 
the two attitudes do not seem to be mutually exclusive and 
sometimes they are confused. We shall therefore devote 
this chapter to two types which set the matter before us 
more clearly. In our interpretation we may safely be 
guided by the fact that actions speak louder than words, that 
is, the rite speaks more clearly of past belief than does the 
uttered creed of today. 

THE RELIGION OF THE AINUS 

The savages found in Japan and called by themselves 
Ainu, that is, the " men " (or people) but mocked by the 
Japanese as " dogs," aino, were hairy-skinned aborigines, 
who afterwards sought safety in Yezo. Some are now in 
Saghalin. These Ainus were obviously influenced to some 
extent by the Japanese (they still revere a Japanese hero 
Yoshitsune) before they were visited, in the last century, 
by the missionary who came to Yezo before the arrival, in 

46 



AINUS AND NATURISM 47 

1878, of Miss Isabella Bird. Though with them but a few 
weeks, Miss Bird lived on terms of intimacy with them, 
found them very gentle, won their confidence, and drew 
from them apparently honest replies to questions of a re- 
ligious nature. Ten years afterwards. Rev. Mr. Batchelor 
arrived in Yezo and discovered in their religion those higher 
ideas and precise notions which Miss Bird had denied them. 
Mr. Batchelor accounts for the discrepancy by supposing 
that the savages were intentionally reticent until he came. 
But Miss Bird says they were eager to tell her all they 
knew. When she asked about a future life their reply that 
they had no distinct ideas on the subject was evidently not 
intended to guard a sacred mystery. On the other hand, 
Mr. Batchelor etymologizes the word Kamui (Japanese 
Kami), though it is a general word, appli'ed to any " spirit," 
good or bad, as " he who covers " ; argues from this that 
the Ainus originally knew God as Heaven or Coverer, and 
finally, as having known God, credits them with having 
been monotheists, though they are now degraded '' poly- 
theists." 

Apart from this quaint interpretation of Ainuism, Mr. 
Batchelor has, however, done excellent work in adding to 
what Miss Bird and others had observed. He has also 
given us some valuable legends which, though he has not 
noticed it, confirm the account of Miss Bird. 

The Ainus take little interest in the ghost. Food is not 
placed in or by the grave and only women have anything 
to say to the dead, whom they fear but do not worship. 
They have no very definite belief as to a future life. The 
dead go into animals, or go under ground, and are supposed 
to take with them implements broken, hence as dead, for use 
in the world of the grave. Mr. Batchelor opines that the 
Ainus think " heaven " and *' hell " await respectively the vir- 
tuous and the wicked ; but he adds somewhat naively : " To 
hear the people talk, one might be tempted to believe that 
the Ainus think heaven itself to be in Hades." To hear 
the people talk was Miss Bird's way of understanding them. 



48 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

and her conclusion was that the Ainus vaguely believed in 
a vague future in a vague place. 

The chief interest of the Ainus is in this life, not in the 
next, and the powers they recognize are not God and gods, 
but nature-powers, usually translated spirits, but in reality 
intel%ent powers expressed in phenomena, either natural, 
sun, sea, river, cloud, tree, rock, sand, disease; or artificial, 
hut, pot, knife, etc. Every one of these has, or rather is, 
an intelligent power, not always good or bad, but usually 
to be made good or bad by human influence exerted through 
offerings. Good is what does man good ; evil is what harms 
him. Some, such, for example, as diseases, are always evil ; 
others are always good. A great body like the sea or a tree 
has various good and bad expressions, the more vivid the 
more personal. One such power-expression of the sea is 
almost a spirit who drowns a man ; another saves him. Less 
vivid, a tree has a thousand powers or souls ; that is, every 
limb and twig is its own soul-endued power. Expressed too 
animistically, a thousand or so " spirits " are in every tree. 
Many of the so-called spirits are not free spirits. Each is 
bound not only to its own environment, a purely local 
power, but bound up with its material. There is no sun- 
spirit, only a spiritized sun; no cooking-pot spirit, only an 
intelligent cooking pot. It is not the " spirit " of the dead 
bear that is addressed but the bear himself, and it is not 
his " spirit " that is sent away, but the bear.^ 

The savage is a practical man. His religion consists 
largely in making the best of his unavoidable neighbours. 
The Ainu honours most the most useful, sea, fire, and the 
bear, each as a spiritual potency. He dislikes most the old 
female of the marsh, whom he does not worship but calls 
ancestress or aunt, and who inflicts him with hideous dis- 
eases. This is a functional Potency. His ritual is scarcely 

1 Stories of free " spirits " abound in the collections made by 
Batchelor and Chamberlain. They are called " gods " as well. Such 
spirits may exist, though it is questionable, in the Ainu's unaided 
imagination, but the non-free potency, not recognized at all by these 
authors, is the instructive element in this religion. 



AINUS AND NATURISM 49 

more than pouring libations of sake, the use of (Japanese) 
" god-sticks," and the " worship " of the useful food he 
eats.^ In sympathetic magic, images called inoka are used 
as elsewhere and call for no special remark. One buries the 
image to bury the foe. 

But the process of " eating the god," though it is scarcely 
that, deserves serious attention. Millet is the chief cereal. 
Like every other phenomenon it is alive, intelligent. As an 
animal is killed, so the millet is cooked. Then the cooked 
millet is addressed with these words : " O Millet, thou hast 
grown well for us ; we thank thee ; we eat thee." This is as 
near worship as the Ainu comes; but in this simple ritual 
there is a distinct recognition of the cereal as a beneficent 
power. 

Mythology requires imagination. It is not well devel- 
oped among these savages. Millet does not become Deme- 
ter. In fact there is little real mythology. Serpents come 
from a sky-serpent, probably lightning as a serpent. Ants 
come from a putrified dragon. The peeled wand or god- 
stick is cut into six shavings and six are the worlds ; or there 
are six above and six below. An eclipse is caused by an evil 
power, but to avert the eclipse the Ainus fling up water, re- 
garding the sun as fainting and needing revival. The fire- 
spirit can cure sickness. 

In mourning, hands are washed to clean off the death- 
infection and hair is shaved or dishevelled to escape notice. 
Graves are avoided. Women may not know incantations 
and may not utter their husbands' names, lest they acquire 
power over the name-hypostasis of the person. Evil spirits 
are driven off by swinging knives ; as when a man is drown- 
ing, the spirit being the water-evil. The couvade is prac- 
tised and tattooing, but no reason for it is known. 

Ordeals, of hot water, hot stone, drinking medicated 
water, are like those elsewhere. Only one is peculiar. A 

iTo guard against evil or wild beasts the skulls of bears and 
foxes are placed upon poles in a sort of sacred hedge. The fox- 
skull is also used as an oracle, its jaw pointing to a thief, etc. 



50 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

cup flung over the shoulder must land right side up or the 
thrower is guilty. Important is the fact that in all ordeals 
the sentient object decides the case; it is not acting as an 
agent for a higher power. Among ordeals the most reli- 
gious is that of the fire-ordeal, because Fire per se has be- 
come almost a goddess. She is the witness to a promise, 
as of marriage, and is especially invoked with a little 
ritual : " We drink sake to thee ; we give thee the lees ; 
keep evil from us ; send us good." To make sure that the 
Fire understands, a messenger is sent to her in the shape 
of a burnt stick. The whole content of a Vedic Fire-hymn 
is virtually contained in the simple address. This message- 
motif also is note-worthy. So, as will be seen, the dead bear 
is really sent as a messenger to the bear-ancestor. 

In the case of all these spirits we should use the word 
power rather than spirit. The " water-cap spirit," for ex- 
ample, is really only the potency-filled cloud itself. Very 
clear is this in the case of the " vegetation-demons," which 
even Mr. Batchelor recognizes as vague potencies rising 
like mist from the ground and conceived as male and fe- 
male powers of productivity. Air-spirits, potencies, are 
clearer because more visible in effect. As the Ainus say, 
"they give much trouble" (storm, hail, etc.). Fuji, the 
Fire, is inseparable from her material self, but as a vivid 
friend is more personified. She is even given a husband, 
namely the house-guardian, represented by a stick placed 
in the corner of the hut where heirlooms lie, not inaptly 
compared by Mr. Batchelor with Penates, and possibly, as 
he suggests, ancestral in character, though this remains 
doubtful. Evil spirits, to use this word, as a class are 
called nitne, " oppressive," that is, troublesome ; or, as Mr. 
Batchelor puts it, *' Satan and all his angels are called nitne 
kamiii." 

It is doubtful whether the Ainus have any totemism at 
all. The individual totem is not a totem but a fetish made 
of a willow-stick cut to look like a backbone, and supposed 
to preserve the owner's soul, like other such soul-recepta- 



AINUS AND NATURISM 5^ 

cles. The mystery of the soul and backbone is widespread. 
In Greece, for example, the soul is in the backbone, and the 
buried backbone is revived as a snake ; hence the close con- 
nexion between the two in Greek mythology. 

Mr. Batchelor says a boy once vaunted himself to be the 
descendant of an eagle and offers this as a possible example 
of a family-totem. But apparently only one boy ever 
thought of such a thing and, in any case, descent from an ani- 
mal does not show totemism. No animal or vegetable clans 
exist. There remains the " national totemism " shown by 
the most celebrated item of Ainu religion, the bear-cult. 
This is not totemic, for the bear is not a clan-brother and 
his blood is drunk only incidentally, and then jiot always, by 
a few people ; more to get vigour than to renew clan-life. 
The bear is called divine and is worshipped ; but any ani- 
mal is " divine " enough to be called so to its face. Never- 
theless, in that the bear is slain by the people, and his 
body is shared by all, the ritual certainly smacks of totem- 
ism. 

In brief, the ceremony is as follows : A cub is raised with 
care, well fed, and then at the stated time addressed by its 
slayers thus : '' O divine cub, who art come into the world 
to be hunted by us, we pray to thee. We have nourished 
thee well, because we love thee, and now we are sending thee 
to thy father and mother. Do thou speak well of us to 
them. Tell them how well we have nourished thee and then, 
next season, come back to us and we will slay thee again." 
Then women dance about him, and men slay him, careful 
not to let the blood touch the ground, and, cutting off his 
head, they place some of his own body before it with other 
edibles, that the bear himself may share the feast, while they 
pass around the "cup of boiled bear" (brains and sake), 
which all must at least taste. Then Bruin is sent away by 
having his head placed on the " sending pole," around which 
men and women dance. The name of the whole ceremony is 
the " sending away." It is almost identical with that of the 
Lillooet, in British Columbia, who mourn the bear they kill 



52 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

and raise his head on a pole, invoking him to send more bear- 
food ; likewise a non-totemic clan-rite. 

The Ainu feast is also one of invigoration and productivity 
rather than of blood-communion. Nothing in the ritual sug- 
gests clan-brotherhood v^ith the cub except the cup-cere- 
mony, but even then nothing is said to indicate this. Fos- 
ter-kinship with the bear is due to the fact that the cub is 
always suckled by one of the women. The whole object 
of the feast is to get vigour from the bear for now and to 
secure more bear hereafter. Hence the " sending away." 
But, if not totemistic, this rite approaches closely the Cau- 
casus type of totemism, in which the clan regularly kill the 
totem for food yet on special occasions sacrifice and eat one 
member of the animal totem-clan. This again differs from 
the Egyptian and Toda type, in which the totem has become 
more holy than wholesome and is not used as food. 

The Ainus have neither gods, priests, nor temples. Ac- 
cording to Rev. Mr. Batchelor, however, " they see the hand 
of God in everything. The world, indeed, is His temple, 
Nature His Book, every man His priest, and each chief His 
high priest," and not only this but they possess *' a belief 
in one Supreme God and a doctrine of mediation." As was 
pointed out in the last chapter, it is of interest to find the 
prototype of higher religion in the lower, but it is not neces- 
sary to impute the technicalities of theology to the savage. 
What Mr. Batchelor means is that the bear is sent away to 
its mother with a message, and the burnt stick thrust into the 
fire acts as messenger to the fire ; ergo, these savages have a 
" doctrine of mediation." ^ 

Thus the vital facts in primitive Ainu religion are that 
these savages, whether or not they believe in spirits not phe- 
nomenal, do worship phenomena ; that they treat their grain 

1 Professor Chamberlain and Mr. Howard have followed Mr. 
Batchelor's interpretation, though their Ainus are not the same. 
Mr. Howard's are in Saghalin and his understanding of them was 
quite different till Mr. Batchelor showed him how to, interpret. 
A similar attempt has been made to interpret the Ainus as 
"Aryans" in race and language; but this also has failed. 



SHAMANISM 53 

as a sentient being ; that they give food and drink to fire as 
to a person, to propitiate it ; that they " send away '* not a 
spirit but the bear, to propitiate the bear-people and get more 
bear to eat ; and that they have no cult of ghosts. Of sec- 
ondary importance is it that from the Japanese and from 
Christians they have absorbed some religious paraphernalia 
and some higher ideas, vaguely understood and retained, just 
as the Negroes have seized and held the idea of God given 
them by others. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Miss Isabella Bird (Mrs. Bishop), Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, 

London, 1878-1881. 
H. Von Siebold, Ethnologische Studen iiber die Aino, Berlin, 

t88i. 
B. Scheube, Der B'drencultus, contained in Romyn Hitchkock's 

Ainos of Yezo, Japan, Report of the National Museum, 

1890. 
Rev. John Batchelor, The Ainu of Japan, New York, 1895. 
B. Douglas Howard, Life with the Trans-Siberian Savages, of 

Saghalin, London, 1893. 
A. W. S. Landor, Alone with the Hairy Ainu, London, 1893. 

SHAMANISM 

Under this name is understood a certain religious attitude 
conspicuous among sundry Mongolian tribes but found in 
many parts of the earth. The word shaman is in fact 
loosely used of almost any savage witch-doctor who becomes 
frenzied and has communication with spirits. In its orig- 
inal form it appears to be a corruption of the Sanskrit 
Shramana, which, indicating a disciple of Buddha, among 
the Mongolians became synonymous with magician. Sha- 
manism today is the name properly applied to the religion of 
certain Ural-Altaic peoples, Finns, Hungarians, Turks, Mon- 
golians, Tunguse, but chiefly those in the eastern part of 
northern Asia. Christianity, Buddhism, and Mohammedism 
have affected the purity of their beliefs and at present Sha- 
manism is best represented by the Tunguse, who with the 
exception of the Manchus are all Shamanists. All Shaman- 



54 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

ists have substantially the same view of the world. Accord- 
ing to it, heaven, earth, and the place under the surface 
of the earth make a three-fold spiritual realm. On and 
above earth live good spirits ; below or within earth live evil 
spirits, presided over by Erlik, originally a super-terrestrial 
man condemned to hell because he wished to be equal to the 
Creator, Kaira Kan, who is father and mother of mankind 
and lives in the highest of the seventeen realms of light. 
These are opposed to the realms of hell, seven or nine in 
number. With Kaira, in the upper world, live the great 
Kans (lords), gods, good spirits, and blessed ghosts. Below 
earth live evil demons, kobalds, goblins, gnomes, swan- 
maidens, and unblessed ghosts. After Erlik's fall, Kaira 
created earth-men, the nine ancestors of the nine races. 
Gods emanating from Kaira are those living below him, for 
example, Bai Yulgen, in the sixteenth heaven, Kysagan, in 
the ninth, and Mergen, who with the (mother) sun lives in 
the seventh heaven, while the (father) moon lives in the fifth 
heaven. There is a demiurge creator in the fifth and Bai 
Yulgen's two sons are in the third heaven. In this third 
heaven live also the souls of the blessed, and there are the 
" sea of milk," or the spring of all life, and the mountains of 
the gods. Earth itself is Jersu, a community of spirits as 
an animate whole, at whose navel lives Jo Kan, a spirit 
whose power is almost equal to that of Kaira, besides whom 
there are other high lords, seventeen in number, like the 
seventeen mountains and seventeen seas. Where the seven- 
teen seas unite, lives the Ocean Kan. There is also an Altai 
Kan or folk-god. Only seven of these lords have the same 
names everywhere; the other ten, perhaps later growths, 
are named differently by different tribes. They, like the 
heavenly lords, are helpers of men and creative powers ; but 
only the earth-lords can be approached directly by ordinary 
men, who offer them gifts or revere them by casting a stone 
on a pile or sing them a song of praise. To honour these 
kindly Jersu, earth-powers, there is no need of an inter- 
mediary priest. 



SHAMANISM 55 

Far different is it with the great lords of the realms above 
and within earth. These can be approached only through 
the mediating spirits of the dead. Thus the good gods 
above must be approached through the Somo, the nine an- 
cestors that guard men. But, and herein lies the key of 
Shamanism, only certain families can control the Somo and 
other spirits. The power, however, is not inherited but 
inherent in certain families. That is, the power is not 
passed on from father to son, but each son of the favoured 
family is in turn seized with an ecstasy and becomes in- 
spired, till in this state he is able to act in the capacity of 
an intermediary between man and the spirits. These are the 
Shamans. In producing rain, they sometimes call on Kaira 
Kan to open the sky, but always at the same time they call 
on the forefather. In other words, Kaira Kan may be 
omitted, but never the ghost. Shamanism is therefore pri- 
marily a cult of spirits, conceived as ancestral ghosts. 

Despite the theory of gods and the lofty cosmogony, which 
may be due in part to Buddhistic influence, the spirits in- 
voked are not generally of the upper but of the lower world. 
Erlik himself, the prince of evil and of death, is called 
Father Erlik, because though a foe of man, " all men belong 
to him and he at last takes their lives." To Erlik are at- 
tributed all misfortunes, from poverty to death, and because 
of this power man honours him, calls him father, and makes 
offerings to him. Although the spirits of light are more 
powerful than those of darkness, the former need little at- 
tention, because they are good and kind ; whereas evil spirits, 
if not appeased, would constantly do injury. In consequence, 
the shamanistic cult consists for the most part in placating 
evil spirits. In this it resembles the cults of Akkadians and 
Dravidians; but its special feature lies in the close connex- 
ion between man and his ancestors through the ecstatic 
Shaman. The Shaman's power is not his own but that of 
the Manes infused into him. He is not possessed by the 
devil but by the spirit of his ancestor. When thus possessed 
he ascends to heaven or descends to hell (ancestral spirits 



56 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

being in both spheres) and influences the powers as he will. 
The Shaman also arranges the sacrifice, purifies the house of 
death by driving forth the ghost, and acts also as physician, 
weather-prophet, and soothsayer. All these offices belong 
to his kamlanie or shamanizing {kam, Turkish for Shaman). 
His indispensable instrument is a drum with which to coerce 
spirits ; but too he is usually adorned with bits of iron and 
other apotropaic tags and bobs, perhaps of fetish character.^ 
Though rather feared than liked, he is looked upon as a ne- 
cessity, since apart from obtaining good things from the 
spirits, man's happiness depends upon the Shaman's ability 
to satisfy spirits of both classes, for the following reason. 
When a man is born, Bai Yulgen sends a good spirit, first 
to draw his life from the sea of milk and then to guard and 
guide him. But at the same time Erlik sends a devil to 
mislead him. After death both spirits accompany the soul 
to the judgment-hall below and as one has followed the sug- 
gestions of either spirit one joins the blessed or damned. 
But virtue is not enough to give happiness, which consists 
in possessing good things, for both in heaven and hell the 
spirits, as in Egypt, are envious and desire his goods, which 
they may steal from him if not placated by means of a 
Shaman. 

A sacrifice to Erlik can be made anywhere, but one to 
Bai Yulgen must be made with more or less secrecy in a 
grove. The ceremony lasts three nights. On the first, a 
horse is slain, without bloodshed ; ^ on the second the 
Shaman ascends or descends to the spirit-world by mystic 
ceremonies, in which the Shaman rides the pur a (soul) of 
the slaughtered horse. At various stages he utters prophe- 

1 They do not seem to be used as real fetishes, however, but as 
ghost-scarers simply. 

2 So the Ainu bear in strangled, and the Hindu horse in the old 
Vedic sacrifice. In none of these cases, however, is the ground 
made taboo by the blood. Possibly, as with the Ainus, where it is 
wiped off very carefully, the ground would be so taboo that it is 
safer to regard it as not touched if the blood is immediately 
erased. 



SHAMANISM 57 

cies in an ecstatic condition till he reaches the abode of the 
spirit sought, whom he beseeches to ward off evil or grant 
some good. The third night is devoted to carousing with 
the offering of libations. It is a matter of indifference to 
the Shaman whether he go up to heaven or down to hell. 
Shamanism therefore is not purely diabolical, a devil-w^or- 
ship, as it is often considered, but a cult of spirits ; though 
the office of ghost-scarer, who purifies the house, is as im- 
portant as any and one most frequently exercised. To bless, 
to offer homage to the Jersu, even to prophesy and make 
rain are in the capacity of others, but only a Shaman can 
make sacrifice to the great gods and devils and purify a 
house. Yet, unless the influence of unlucky stars must be 
averted, the Shaman has no part in ceremonies of birth, 
marriage, or death. There is practically no worship of ma- 
terial objects. It is clear that most of the cosmogony and 
ranks of gods are secondary. Shamanism is at bottom 
ghost-worship, a cult of ghosts or ancestral spirits as funda- 
mental as is the nature-power-cult of Ainuism. To be no- 
ticed also is the prominence of the evil spirit and the neces- 
sary extasis of the mediating priest, who works only through 
spirit-possession, the spirit being always ancestral, never a 
nature-spirit. 

If we strip off the Buddhistic accumulation, w^hich from 
the name of the Shaman to the role of the Evil One are 
secondary elements, we get to the foundation fact, which is 
that the ancestral spirit is a friendly creature, who watches 
over his family and communicates with them by means of 
an inspired mediator. Now if we take a still purer case of 
Shamanism, among an utterly simple people, we find this 
result abundantly confirmed. Such a case is to be found 
among the Veddas of Ceylon in their most uncorrupted 
state. Here the religious instinct expresses itself in an un- 
questioning belief that the father when dead still lives, 
guards, and guides his family in the hunt; and that he is 
communicated with through a common meal and the medi- 
ation of an ecstatic Shaman, whose dervish dance by auto- 



58 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

intoxication makes this actor imagine that he is really 
speaking as possessed by the dead Yaku (ghost). Likewise 
in the arrow-dance, the aid of the ancestor is sought by the 
same means. Here also it is assumed that the ancestor is 
well-disposed. Only contact with the outer world has 
taught the Veddas that the country is full of inimical Yaku.^ 

LITERATURE 

W. Radloff, Aus Sibericn, 2d ed., Leipzig, 1893. 

Mikhailovski, Shamanism, Journ. Anthrop. Inst., xxiv., pp. 6<)i., 

1895.. 
C. G. Seligmann, The Veddas, Cambridge, 191 1. 

1 Several features deserve more than the allusion permitted by 
space, such as the importance of hair-vigour in the Shaman, the 
instruction given to the " fit " pupil, and the gradual exaltation 
in Vedda belief of one greatest spirit to godhead. The sacrificial 
communal meal becomes so charged with spirit-power that the 
remnant is even rubbed upon the noses of the hunting-dogs, not to 
speak of the persons of the family, to heighten their ability (compare 
the Hindu ucchishta, the potent remnant of sacrifice). The original 
belief as to the dead seems to have been that only the stronger 
spirits survive to an indefinite period ; others fade out, probably 
after a few generations. The etymology of Shaman given above is 
not certain, though probable. 



CHAPTER FIVE 

POLYNESIAN RELIGIONS 
I. SPIRITS, MYTHS, AND CHARMS 

The spirits, generally malevolent, of the Polynesians are 
strongly anthropomorphic. So romantic, and at the same 
time realistic, is the conception of these spirits that Poly- 
nesian mythology reminds one of the heroic tales of Greek 
gods and goddesses. In both there is a poetic element which 
beautifies the ugliness of the inner belief in treacherous, 
filthy, cowardly gods. We enter here a different plane from 
that of the Negro's religion, one reflecting the higher intel- 
lectuality of the Ocean race. 

The Polynesian spirits are somewhat confused with ghosts, 
yet they are formally distinguished from them and in fact 
are generally nature-spirits, not usually natural objects wor- 
shipped as such, but objects manifesting free spirits con- 
ceived as almost human in form and character. To them 
as malignant beings are ascribed not only disease, death, 
and great misfortune, but even the slightest untoward acci- 
dent. This, too, is Greek. In the account of the funeral 
games in the Iliad, every hero whose chariot upsets or who 
has a fall due to his own lack of skill, lays it to the inter- 
ference of some malicious spirit (goddess). The Tahitians 
ascribe the slightest misfortune to a devil's ill-will; the 
Maori gods are great devils, who appear in lightning and 
storm but differ only in size from the little devils in noxious 
insects and reptiles : ** thick as mosquitoes the devils sur- 
round us." But some do good at times or are merely ca- 
pricious. In general, Polynesian spirits, though fickle, are 
by predilection malign. Some undoubtedly are now ghosts 

59 



6o THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

that were originally nature-powers ; for, like the Finns, who 
have euhemerized their gods, the Polynesians show a tend- 
ency to adopt into the family some non-ghostly spirits. 

There are even traces of the actual worship of natural 
objects. Prayers and offerings are addressed to reptiles, to 
rocks, to rivers, and to trees, quite directly, and trees are 
adorned with red ochre and cloths as signs of v/orship ; while 
the word religion is said to mean " sacred tree." ^ 

On the other hand, the secret societies indicate a cult of 
ghosts. The ancestors were imagined as reptilian troglo- 
dytes and both they and their descendants as ghosts give 
fertility. The ghost-form is almost exclusively the object 
of the Melanesian Tamate (society), but the Melanesians 
are not so primitive as the Polynesians. Yet the usual idol, 
a stick adorned with a carved head, and put in the ground 
as a tutelary power to mark property-lines, is said to repre- 
sent gods not ghosts. Totemism, also, is weakly represented, 
perhaps in genuine form only in Samoa. Papuans and Sol- 
omon Islanders are related to animals but not totemistically. 
So the common worship of eels is not a sign of totemism. 
Animals appear as incarnations of both ghosts and gods. 
Thus the lizard is a spirit or god, not a ghost-spirit. There 
is also a pronounced litholatry with some phallic cult, which 
may also be reflected in the Putete circumcision-ceremony 
of New Zealand and the corresponding Fiji rite. 

Gods in any case have a divinity synonymous with devilry. 
Thus the Atua (god) is a spirit of disease, plague, and 
thievery ; atua ika are fish-gods or reptiles ; and a sea-mon- 
ster, he ika, was regarded as a dead chief famed for cruelty 
in life and regarded as still more malignant in death. De- 
partmental gods are found here, spirits presiding over pains 
in the head, in the breast, child-birth, etc., and Maru is at 
once a god of war and a disease-demon, whose priests are 
fat because, though insatiable, he, like an African god, 
leaves the gross part of the sacrifice to them. It is imma- 
terial whether one calls these spirits gods or devils. 

1 Compare Taylor, Te Ika a Maui, London, 1870, p. 104. 



POLYNESIAN SPIRITS AND CHARMS 6l 

The root-idea of divinity is expressed by " pith," that is, 
power. That is the reason why there is no distinction be- 
tween god and devil; a spirit has pith or power, whether 
good or bad. Moreover it is only a question of degree 
whether man is not divine. A man losing heart is said to 
" lose his pith " (his spirit), the same word translated " di- 
vinity." In the poetic cosmogony the gods are creative 
spirits. Before heaven was uplifted from earth, there 
were only " Night and dark gods " ; they were succeeded by 
Rangi, Heaven, and Papa, Earth, the parents of men. For 
Rangi created man in his own image by kneading clay with 
his own blood (life).^ But other gods were makers (cre- 
ators) ; Tawiri, of storms; Tane, of trees (he is also the 
general male principle of generation) ; ^ Tangaroa, of fish, 
but also of day. This last god has one sacred grove and, by 
some scholars, is regarded as the chief god, because most 
widely recognized. Other tales ascribe to Ra the origin 
of other gods and of men and mountains. On the other 
hand, Turi is a demi-god ancestor and Maui a culture-hero. 
An indigenous worship of stars is referred to the effort of 
one native " founder " of a special religion. Ordinarily, 
stars, like clouds, are souls of heroes; the more foes they 
have slain the brighter they are. Stars, moon, sun, etc., 
are denizens of ten heavens. 

Opposed to Night (chaos) of the underworld, the chief 
gods are those of day and light, Motoro, light and love ; Ra, 
the sun ; Vatea, another ** father of gods and men," half 
fish and half human, without grove or idol or sacrifice, be- 
cause he represents what to the Polynesian is illimitable 
majesty, Ocean. Probably different clan- or district-gods 
account for the variety of creators of the same things. To 
turn to the lower mythology, there are small white fairies, 
spirits of hill and mist (quite Celtic), who seize women; 

1 Taylor, op. cit, p. 117. Rangi is creator; Rongo is war-god. 
^ 2 This important principle is complemented by the female prin- 
ciple, regarded as destructive, like the Chinese sex-opposites. 
Compare also the destructive female power in the Hindu Kali, 
"wife" of the god of life and destruction. 



62 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

and giants, not ghosts, of the caves and mountains, some- 
times represented as dragons, who cause land-slides. To 
the dark spirit Night the Polynesians pay as much reverence 
as to the light-gods. Another spirit, elsewhere poetical, 
here real, is Echo, who has a cult. Meteors are souls; 
eclipse, a demon; the gods, like men, carry clubs and fight, 
light against dark. The dark half of the month is sacred 
to Iro, god of murderers and thieves, who has a charm-song: 
" Let deep sleep overcome this house ; sleep on, owner of 
the house; threshold, sleep on; insects of the house, sleep 
on," etc., much Hke one of the Vedic Hymns (Rig Veda, vii. 

55)-^ 

Many Polynesian myths resemble those of other lands. 

Eneene seeks below earth the beloved wife who has died 
and brings her back ; the moon-goddess has intercourse with 
her human lover ; Tawaki stamps a hole through the stone 
(sky) and lets out the waters above, causing a deluge ; then, 
killed by his brothers, he is resurrected and ascends to 
heaven again. - 

No lofty sentiment inspires the blessed who sit in heaven. 
Their chief delight is to mock and drop filth on those below 
in hell and watch them in their struggles to get out. Ngaru 
was a hero who overcame the " demon of the sky," pre- 
venting him from further destruction of men, for 'whom 
he used to angle. Most of man's tormentors, however, 
came out of an opening on earth, till fair Tiki stopped it 
with her own (sacrificed) body, " for love of mankind." 
This opening leads to Avaiki, where base men's souls are 
cooked and eaten by the fiend Miru. Originally Avaiki was 
"down" west (sun-down). Until it acquired the mean- 
ing of down below (earth), all shades went to Avaiki; the 
feet of the buried still lie westward. Later only nobles or 
braves went thither, " following the sun " to heaven ; com- 
mon men went to the world below, to be " eaten by gods." 

1 Gill, Myths and Songs from the South Pacific, London, 1876, 
p. 150. 

2 Taylor, op. cit., p. loi. 



POLYNESIAN SPIRITS AND CHARMS 63 

Annihilation awaits all but the brave. But some still 
think the soul lingers by the body and offerings are placed 
in the grave. The Fiji Islanders, perhaps Papuans, believe 
that the soul has the same body after death. It passes over 
a " path of shades," drinking the fount of forgetfulness, a 
Lethe which causes even the mourners to forget their grief. 
They affectionately strangle their parents while still strong, 
lest senile decay make their life unpleasant hereafter. In 
New Guinea the Papuans make an image for the dead man's 
soul to live in, not from affection but to keep it out of 
mischief.^ 

The '' leaping place " of the dead is where, when a suffi- 
cient number have collected, after the sun goes down, the 
leap to heaven is made. By means of a narrow bridge the 
souls first pass the river Waioratane, but here the bridge- 
keeper may send a soul back (explanation of resuscitation). 
Then they individually leap up and so become stars or clouds. 
The only moral content Hes in the fact that the brave alone 
ever get as far as the bridge. There must have been a con- 
current belief in metempsychosis, for many of the gods are 
ancient heroes and also take animal forms. But such a 
belief is now held very vaguely. Some think a man's spirit 
is reborn in his son.^ 

The burial rite was elaborate, for it required eighteen 
Karakias (spells) and, after the first burial, was completed 
by cleaning and painting the bones, which were then pre- 
served. The head was often embalmed. There was no 
rite for marriage, the girl becoming taboo, sacred, for her 
husband at the wedding-feast, without any spell, probably 
because she was usually stolen. Tribal relations, however, 

1 Basil Thomas, in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. 1895, p. 349f. In regard 
to the chiefs, it is to be noticed that the priests called " mouth-pieces 
of Rongo," the war-god, were distinct from the military chiefs 
and might neither fight nor be tattoed (Tahiti, tatu, "mark," a 
decorative not religious sign, according to Gill, p. 95 and Taylor, 
p. 394). 

2 Taylor, pp. 22>2„ 299. In the East Indian Archipelago, the good 
native hopes when he dies to become a crocodile. 



64 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

were so loose among the Maoris that sometimes the groom 
renounced his tribe and hved with his father-in-law, fight- 
ing against his own tribe or horde. Death-dances at 
funerals resemble those in Mexico, but do not prove con- 
nexion.^ 

The Polynesian priesthood was graded, though no priest 
was more than a wizard. Yet Tohungas were lower than 
Ariki, who were high-priests of divine power defied only 
by the strongest chiefs. But even a woman-chief has been 
known to counter-taboo a tabooing Ariki and overcome him. 
Tahiti had a graded priest-corporation, and the lower grades, 
Areois, were strolling players who acted religious scenes in 
the life of the gods, under the patronage of the god Oro, 
to whom were given the first-fruits of harvest. Songs and 
dances received priestly recognition as part of the " play." 
It is uncertain whether the harvest-spirits active in these 
performances were nature-spirits or ghosts. 

The cult is conspicuous for cannibalistic human sacri- 
fice; it is offered to most of the gods, especially to Kongo. 
Remains of the victims were distributed to chiefs as title 
of land-ownership. The priest's power was enormous ; who- 
ever interfered with his prerogatives was afflicted with 
hydrocele or other diseases, which, however, might be cured 
by a Karakia, a kind of incantation used to avert all trou- 
bles and bring all blessings, for the individual and for the 
state, on occasion of harvest, hunting, battle, etc. The 
Karakia is often only a hymn of indefinite thanks. Thus 
for hunting : " Give thanks above and below, give thanks 
to the Mother" (goddess). These Karakia were counted 
by stalks, the rosary-idea, and the gods entered images to 

1 Such connexion has also been based on the fact that a South 
American paddle is " Melanesian " in appearance or that lo means 
a spade in Mexico and in New Zealand. More important are the 
idols and temple-ruins found in New Zealand, which indicate 
either foreign influence or great decadence. According to Mr, Best 
{Man, 1914), New Zealand was settled about 900 years ago by 
eastern Polynesians who combined with the native lower type of 
Fiji-like savages. The Maori could have learned fortification -build- 
ing, building-sacrifice, and cannibalism from these (Maruiwi). 



POLYNESIAN SPIRITS AND CHARMS 65 

reply to them. The priest played the Shaman, as medium 
between men and gods. With writhing body and rolling 
eye, insensible to the world, he spoke the oracle.^ Move- 
ments of limbs, birds, and dreams were also oracular. 

Not only before war but at its close was a Karakia nec- 
essary. Especially to lift the war-taboo against wives, 
which was entrusted to a special god, Tu. In war all a 
man's strength is required ; hence the soft delights of home 
were formally tabooed by Karakia, till it was over ; then 
a second Karakia lifted it. Another parallel to foreign 
usage is that of the scape-goat. Over one man was sung 
a Karakia, which bound on him by proxy all the sins of 
the tribe, which he carried in a stalk of fern. This he let 
float down the river, carrying away the people's sins. An- 
other Karakia is pronounced at baptism, when a child is 
eight days old and a name is given him. The boy is sub- 
sequently "confirmed" (Dr. Taylor's expression), that is, 
dedicated before battle to the war-god with a Karakia 
exhorting him to be virtuous (brave). With a girl the 
name is given under this formula : " Give her a name ! 
What is this little girl? She is a living breath, the breath 
of a great chief coming from heaven ; for lo ! the sky has 
breathed forth " (to make her soul) ; an interesting coun- 
terpart to the Hebrew idea of soul as the breath of God. 
In regard to the name, a man has several. One is given 
purely for personal reasons. For example, one man was 
called Mawai (cucumber) because he could creep so craftily 
upon the ground. In India a similar name meaning gourd 
has been taken to prove " vegetable totemism " ! 

To sum up the externals of Polynesian religion, there is 
no doubt that these savages worshipped ghosts as ancestors, 
or that they also worshipped natural phenomena, nor much 
doubt that they so confused the two classes that neither 
they nor we in many instances can say to which class the 
object worshipped belongs. Some scholars even regard all 
the spirits as ghosts. As to the philosophic pantheism 

1 Taylor, op. cit., p. 183. 



66 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

attributed to these savages by Taylor and Gill, it is partly 
due to the idea of mana and partly to a natural read- 
ing-in of higher ideas. According to Taylor, the Maori 
believed that the world came from swelling, which made 
thought, which produced memory, desire, spirit, and mat- 
ter. At first all was darkness and nought; till from noth- 
ing came swelling (conception), increase, and then breath 
(spirit), which made air, atmosphere, and then the eyes 
of heaven, that is, sun and moon, out of which came sky and 
land united, till Ra (sun) made gods and men; "and Turi 
was the first man to come from Hawaiki " (to New Zea- 
land). This seems to be a double account. The sixth crea- 
tion is formally stated to be gods and men, as if the original 
series had been thought, breath, darkness-world, light, sky- 
earth, gods-men, but at best it is a philosophy doubtless more 
or less '* interpreted," though it remains a fair parallel to 
Rig Veda x. 129, which has a somewhat similar series. 
What is most interesting, however, is the fact that here, as 
often, savages explain the world by natural evolution. Our 
California Indians do the same. 

In the religious thought of the Polynesians, death is an 
extreme form of sickness. The line is drawn not between 
life and death but between strength and weakness. A Fiji 
Islander stands in a tree-top when a member of the family 
has died and calls to it, " Come back, come back," as if it 
might return. Elsewhere death is a sleep. To kill is to 
" put to sleep " ; an extinguished fire " sleeps." ^ 

Totemism of a peculiar sort is found in Fiji, where a 
man's father's plants and animals are the man's totems, of 

1 See Dr. W. H. R. Rivers in the Hibbert Journal, 1912, p. 393; 
and A. M. Hocart in Man, 1915, No. 5. It is perhaps questionable, 
however, exactly how the phenomena here should be interpreted. 
The Chinese also call " come back," and putting to sleep is a Hindu 
euphemism for killing. The general belief that death is only 
extreme weakness is an illustration of a common savage idea. 
Conversely, old men are called " ghosts " by some Polynesians, as 
having already become pure spirit. Yet only as lacking strength, 
not as a Buddhist or Yogi becomes, while still alive, a spiritual 
power. 



MANA AND TABOO 67 

which he may thus have a number. This is evidently a 
property-taboo passing into a form of itotemism.^ 

II. MANA AND TABOO 

Mana (both vowels are short) is inherent power, some- 
times spiritual, a Polynesian synonym of our Indian Wakan, 
Orenda, etc., and a savage equivalent of the Hindu Brahma 
(power). Taboo (Samoan tapu, Hawaiian kapu) is a tab 
or mark indicating that a thing is not noa or common, but set 
apart for private use. A woman is noa till married, then 
she becomes taboo for (sacred to) her husband; if you 
steal her, you break taboo. Taboo connotes Greek ayos 
and aytos, Latin sacer, holy or accursed because awesome. 
Its sign, a red rag, is virtually a Noli me tangere. 

The failure to distinguish between holy and devilish, or 
accursed, lingers long. In Luke xxi. 5, the temple is 
adorned with anathemas, only a vowel's length from 
anathemas, both indicating something '* set up," as de- 
voted, to God or to the Devil, holy or accursed. The Jews 
say "the Holy Scriptures defile the hands," render them 
liable to cleansing from the awesome touch. So with spirits. 
What is ghostly is ghastly. 

But the notion of taboo is so general and the word itself 
so thoroughly anglicized that we need only notice some 
Polynesian exaggerations of taboo and some European ex- 
aggeration of the taboo-theory. Although taboo is found 
everywhere, it is systematically over-stressed in Polynesia. 
Nowhere else is man so taboo-ridden. Here it can be 
studied with greatest ease. Let us imagine ourselves think- 
ing a la Polynesia. 

All things have power ; often concealed. Of spirits it is 
unnecessary to speak ; they and theirs are all naturally awe- 
some, sacred, taboo. Even the priests, who serve spirits, 
are so filled with spiritual power that they may not be 
touched, nor their food tasted ; they must wipe their hands 
on their own hair or on their own dogs. Not so much lest 

1 See A. M. Hocart in Man, 1915, No. 3. 



68 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

they injure others, but lest their power be captured by 
others, who might tise it against them. Whoever shows 
great strength has inward power, mana. Whoever pos- 
sesses power naturally rules ; his mana is extremely danger- 
ous. W^hatever is not understood is dangerous. Many 
animals are dangerous ; all mysterious things are dangerous, 
especially the mysteries of life and death and the spiritual 
world. It is best not to meddle with them, but to taboo 
them. So thinks the savage. That mana is often virility- 
power is probable; its complement is the female power. 
The best defence against magic is a drastic gesture imply- 
ing that one casts his virility against the magician.^ 

But there is no universal system of taboo, no one way of 
thinking about it. Scholars who have gone on the theory 
that there is a world-wide taboo-system have gone wrong. 
They cannot understand how savages in one part of the 
world can contradict their system. Why should one savage 
wash and one refrain from washing after a burial? Why 
should one savage allow a girl who has reached adult age 
to mingle freely with people and another shut her up ? They 
suggest absurd theories to account for such discrepancies. 
The simple truth is that the same situation strikes one sav- 
age in one way and another in another way. The girl, for 
example, has a sudden access of " power " ; she may be dan- 
gerous, and is confined, so some Polynesians think. Other 
savages, like the African Warundi, argue that her power 
adds to the family or tribal power and should be spread 
abroad, and she is led about to " bless " the community. 

A second common error is the one already exposed. It is 
that mana is an universal, almost pantheistic, spiritual power, 
of which every individual has a share. No unaided savage 
ever generalized thus. Each individual has a power, not a 
share of a world-power. There is a tree, a rock, a man, each 
with power, not a general tree-power, etc. ; still less a general 
tree-rock-man-god power. 

1 See Man, 1914, No. 66, and compare the oath by the thigh in 
Hebrew law. 



MANA AND TABOO 69 

A third error is that all taboos are religious. But wher- 
ever priests and kings are, there religious motives are apt 
to become political. So it is with taboo. Originally a har- 
vest is tabooed till the first fruits are religiously gathered. 
The taboo thus becomes a sign to prevent permature har- 
vesting. But, at the same time, the sign of taboo itself, a 
red rag or something of the sort, is utilized to scare rob- 
bers. The private individual acts on this discovery and 
how much more the priest and the king? They taboo, for 
their own convenience and for wealth, whatever they wish 
to keep to themselves. So in the taboo-system we must 
recognize that same intermixture of religion and cunning 
which has exalted other priests and kings. The augur 
winks at his fellow in Polynesia as well as in Rome.^ 

A fourth error is that taboo always implies the fear of a 
spirit. Waitz, Schultze, and other writers of the last cen- 
tury have made this error and Wundt still acts upon it, to 
the great detriment of his work.^ In its most primitive 
manifestations taboo is either spiritual, attia tabu, or non- 
spiritual, mana tabu. In New Zealand these two classes 
are formally recognized. The spirit or god has a power 
tabooed; or a man, garden, tree, river, has each in itself a 
power against which one must guard. In Mikronesia, where 
primitive taboo has been developed far beyond its original 
simplicity, taboo is generally one against spirits. 

The aim of religious purity to a savage is to keep his 
own power or spirit, either by guarding against its loss or 
its weakness, caused by adverse influences. Food-taboos 

iThe exaggeration of this truth leads to the error of Taylor, 
Te Ika a Manx, that all taboo is due to priestly craft. 

2 Wundt, deriving taboo from totemism, explains all morality as 
due to a fear of the ancestral ghost (in vermin as well as in ani- 
mals). His work is a good example of taboo extravagance. 
Wundt teaches for example, that the reason civilized man avoids 
reptiles and vermin is that he has an inherited dread of his an- 
cestral ghost (located in the vermin). Compare Wundt, Volkerpsy- 
chologie, Mythus und Religion,^ Leipzig, 1906, ii. 308. Other 
modern writers occasionally err in making mana always a spirit- 
power (so in Man, 1916, No. 46). 



70 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

are very minute for this reason, but it is not only an atua, 
which might slip in and injure, that one guards against. 
There is also danger in the food-power, the same power that 
inheres in nails, hair, blood, etc. Mana is as contagious as 
small-pox and to be guarded against in the same way. 
Pure taboo is quite limited; most of the cases cited are 
really secondary, like using a rag solely to establish owner- 
ship. In pure taboo it is usually a question of life and 
death. Thus blood is life and ground where blood is shed 
is taboo. Food is life ; hence a harvest-taboo. But when 
a chief taboos his people with the sole object of making 
the lazy fellows work, that is secondary. Wine was taboo 
in Egypt because it was blood-like. But the African yam- 
taboo, like that of some animals in Australia, is purely hy- 
gienic and secondary. Indigestion may be a devil, but when 
the old Australian may not eat pork and his son, of middle 
age, may eat, it is because one cannot, and one can, digest 
it.^ But in taboos of blood, birth, and death there is a real 
if vague dread of a mysterious potency. 

Many simple taboos are due to the twisted logic of the 
savage mind. A knot is difficult. Hence knots and things 
like knots, crossed legs or arms, are capable of restrictive 
influence. Therefore there is a taboo on all such things 
when there is labour or an illness especially dangerous. Ill- 
ness is itself a knot and in Scotland one prays to the Devil to 
loosen the knots of sickness, just as in India one prays to 
Varuna to *' loosen the knots." But a knot is not neces- 
sarily evil, since restriction, of excessive rain-fall, etc., may 
be useful. Such a knot-taboo is more logical than religious ; 
its interpretation is rather magical than spiritual. Name- 
taboos involve the person; whose name is part of himself. 
Hence innumerable taboos, either to prevent a person from 
controlling another whose name is used, or to prevent a 
person from appearing. In South India, a wife will not 

1 In higher religions, if the pig is associated with the underworld, 
it becomes taboo from a new association of ideas, with under-world 
potencies. 



MANA AND TABOO 7^ 

name her husband ; most Hindus today will not divulge their 
real names. In Africa this is called the hlonipa, " taboo of 
naming oneself." In Australia there is a secret name, for 
safety. To prevent sudden appearance, tigers are not called 
tigers in India, and the Devil is called Old Nick in Scotland. 
This is not religious in itself ; but it may easily have a re- 
ligious application. Thus in Polynesia the common people 
v^ere not permitted to know the real name of the great 
Maori god lo (compare the Hebrew parallel), for the same 
reason that forbids an African to name his king. It is prac- 
tically equivalent to boasting that one controls him. In 
Australia the dead are not named, " Lest they hear them- 
selves called and return," or, as our Indians more courte- 
ously say, " No one would stop them on their heavenward 
way." From name-taboo many common words used as 
names may become taboo, without any other religious 
reason.^ 

Marriage taboos are manifold but not all are religious. 
Brother and sister must marry, in Egypt and Peru, for eco- 
nomic reasons; endogamy often precedes exogamy and 
marriages are arranged which, to us, seem incestuous ; or are 
prohibited which to us are allowable.^ Food-taboos, too, are 
often due merely to food- vows. ^ A kingly taboo cannot be 
established merely because of Homer's 'Upov fiivo^, for Tepo?, 
before meaning " divine," meant strong, in itself a good ex- 
ample of how power is interpreted as holy. Dr. Frazer mis- 
takenly concludes that sentinels were '* sacred," because this 
tepos is applied to them. 

1 But it does not follow that linguistic gaps prove taboo. Meringer 
thus thinks to " prove " taboo, and hence totemism, for the Indo- 
Europeans, because they have in part lost the word for bear; Ind, 
Forsch. xxi. 2g6i. 

2 For Frazer's theory that incest is thought to disturb nature 
(a doubtful conclusion), see his Psyche's Task (2 ed. 1913). 

3 Or to other secondary taboo reasons. Thus the Navajo fish- 
taboo is due to the belief that the Navajo is descended from a fish, 
not to an original fish-taboo. The Bengal fish-taboo comes from 
a local rain-god who was once a Mohammedan saint! The Eskimo 
fish-taboo is purely economic. 



72 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Many guesses have been converted into positive assertions 
in the domain of ancient rehgions. How much real taboo 
there was in Nazarite and Essene reHgion it is now impos- 
sible to know. But there is more than enough guess-work 
in regard to modern religions. Thus we are told that the 
dirty savage would never wash himself but for taboo, that a 
new-born baby is washed for taboo, that care for the dead 
is all taboo-work. But many savages in hot climes bathe 
for pleasure ; so do animals, as they clean themselves. The 
Sankrit word for cat means a cleanser, and even a cow licks 
clean its baby; while decaying bodies are repulsive, and in 
warm climates the third day after death makes a corpse an 
object to be got rid of, taboo or no taboo. ^ The savage 
must be given credit for some sense, if not for decency ; also 
for some human nature. Scholars who ascribe to taboo all 
caste-systems, self-adornment, and even umbrellas, should 
study man and history. Castes come from dividing politi- 
cal entities and from different occupations. In both cases 
taboo arises after, not before, the caste. Every savage and 
even some animals affect shiny things. No savage but 
loves a silk hat. Umbrellas in India were not carried till 
late in the historical period and then for the purpose of pro- 
tecting a king from the sun. Anthropologists find savages 
whose priests flatter their king by saying he carries an um- 
brella to protect the sun from His Majesty, and the 
anthropologist, who is often as guiltless of history as the 
savage, believes this. 

As a matter of form some taboos are temporary, some 
permanent, as well as primary and secondary. Temporary 
taboo may be a mere matter of precaution. If a stranger 
arrives, he is temporarily tabooed till the visited tribe see if 
he be spiritually dangerous, a temporary quarantine against 
unknown mana. Of this sort are public taboos set on a 
river or wood for special reasons for a limited time and then 
removed by Karakia. Permanent taboo is that, for exam- 

1 This is the usual time-limit. Forty days may elapse in a cold 
climate, as with the Scythians. 



MANA AND TABOO 73 

pie, of a priest or a king's house. Many taboos arise from 
conservatism and the principle that what is custom is holy. 
Taboos surrounding old Irish kings are simply ancient cus- 
toms sacro-sanct because of immemorable antiquity, not 
because they reflect original taboo. It is taboo to break 
the custom; but that is another matter. The Hindu king 
was told by law when to go to bed ; but being an Aryan he 
never obeyed the rule enough to have a taboo created. On 
the other hand, the Egyptian king so regularly went to bed 
when he was told that his twenty-fifth descendant regarded 
it as a divine law and had a bed-hour taboo which he feared 
to break. 

More important are moral origins reverting to taboo. 
The taboo becomes a categorical imperative. Theft as 
breaking taboo becomes legally sinful. Yet here also the 
anthropologist has exaggerated. He professes to derive all 
moral laws from taboo. Adultery, murder, theft are not 
(he says) sins per se; they are sinful only as violations of 
taboo. But does a dog recognize taboo? Does he not 
punish the dog that steals his bone? Is not murder, the 
slaying of a member of the group, avenged from self-pro- 
tection or sentiment (the tigress slays the murderer of her 
young) more than from taboo? Does only a taboo-fearer 
kill the man who takes his wife? Such taboos, against 
theft, murder, and adultery, exist, but because the act is an 
injury, that is, a wrong.^ 

Dread and dislike begin in the lowest organisms. When 
such an organism in the biological laboratory shifts its po- 
sition from blue light to red, the foundation for taboo is 
laid. Higher up, man shifts from what he dislikes or fears, 
blood or death, imagining in it some mysterious potency. 
Then he begins to create spirit in things and avoids those 

1 A missionary once asked a savage to explain ' wrong.' He 
explained : " When another man steals my wife." "Excellent," 
said the missionary, "and now explain * right.'" He explained: 
" When I steal another man's wife." Morality's basis is personal 
advantage ; only a wider outlook can widen the concepts right 
and wrong. 



74 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

he dislikes, namely the unknown or uncanny. Even before 
the organism invents the idea of spirit, it shies at the un- 
known, as a horse shies at loose paper, instinctively avoid- 
ing all ill, which later becomes evil. Battle-blood alarms no 
savage; but blood appearing in consequence of processes 
not understood calls for taboo, which at bottom is an ex- 
pression of dislike (often merely because unlike leads to 
dislike) or of fear. It may or may not be religious. 
Medhatithi, an old Hindu commentator on divine law, shows 
his sanity when, in explaining taboos against going to bed 
with wet feet and swimming a river, he remarks, " not of 
religious moment." That is, taboo is practical and may be 
religious. Taboo did not originate ethics, as Dr. Jevons has 
tried to persuade us, but it has legalized and strengthened 
morality. It has done this, as man has risen from fear of 
a mysterious power to fear of a more defined spirit-power, 
by eventually putting the fear of God into the sinner. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Richard Taylor, Te Ika a Maui (New Zealand, Maori, etc.), 
London, 1870. 

William W. Gill, Myths and Songs from the South Pacific, Lon- 
don, 1876. 

Theodore Waitz (-Gerland), Anthropologic der Naturvolker, 
Part iii, Leipzig, 1872. 

Edward Shortland, Maori Religion and Mythology, London, 
1882. 

William Ellis, Polynesian Researches (Society and Sandwich 
Islands), 2d ed., London, 1831-32. 

F. B. Jevons, An Introduction to the History of Religion, 2d ed., 
London, 1902; An Introduction to the Study of Compara- 
tive Religion.} New York, 1908. 



CHAPTER SIX 

RELIGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA 

THE ESKIMOS. CENTRAL TRIBES. CULT-HEROES. 
TOTEMISM. RITUAL OF SOUTHERN TRIBES 

In America the highest culture was attained midway be- 
tween North and South; in the North the closest approach 
to civilization was made by the much-encircled Iroquois, 
who had an especial aptitude for political and ethical de- 
velopment, resulting in the Confederacy of Nations and a 
superior moral code. The mental friction produced by all- 
round antagonism often seems to engender intellectual fire, 
of which a clearer religion is a manifestation.^ The mis- 
sionaries asserted that theft and lying were practically un- 
known vices among the Iroquois. Their political supe- 
riority is unquestioned. If they had not been interfered 
with by Europeans they would probably have established 
an Aztec-like hegemony over Eastern America. Conversely, 
the outlying parts of the country, represented by Eskimos 
and Athapascans or, in South America, by Fuegians and 
Patagonians, present the lowest extreme of intellectual 
and religious savagery. There seems to be no racial differ- 
ence to account for this, as the whole country since the 
Stone Age has been occupied by intermingled long-heads 
and round-heads. Some have fancied that aboriginal tribes 
used Atlantic stepping-stones and came from Europe. More 
probable is the theory that the country was settled from 
Asia by the North West passage. But wherever the peo- 
ple came from, there is no certainty as to the provenance 

1 Compare the intellectual superiority of mid-placed groups, such 
as those of Athens and Saxony, in their respective periods. 

75 



76 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

of their religions. We must accept them as American till 
stronger evidence for foreign, extraction has been shown 
than the landing of a Japanese junk in Mexico (in 1845), 
the resemblance of totem-poles to Malay idols, and the 
similarity between Peruvian and Egyptian monuments and 
heliolatry. Parallels are always pleasing but they often 
delude. 

To begin with the outer circle. The Eskimos appear to 
have reached Greenland as emigrants from Alaska by the 
way of Hudson's Bay, or, as some think, they came from the 
latter locality. These lowest Americans, allied to the Aleuts, 
are about on the religious level of the Fuegians, somewhat 
higher than the Andamanese and Australians, somewhat 
lower than the Siberian Shamanists. They have no idols, 
no God, and no theory of creation; only the Greenlanders 
say that woman was created from man's thumb. There is 
no real worship of sun, moon, stars, or any animal. Ban- 
croft, speaking of the Westerners, says, " Their whole re- 
ligion may be summed up as a vague fear, finding its ex- 
pression in witchcraft." ^ Our name for the Eskimos means 
omophagous, an Algonkin epithet; they call themselves In- 
nuit, the ''people" (compare Ainu, etc.). Brinton thinks 
they were the omophagous people who lived about 1300 in 
what is now Rhode Island and Virginia. 

Witchcraft is at least characteristic of the Eskimos. 
Their witch-doctor, Angakok (Tungak) chiefly detected 
wrong-doers; but he was not respected nor feared like his 
African brother; nor was he a religious agent of the people. 
He acquired power by the help of animals seen in drearns or 
of spirits, but he could not control vital forces. In Green- 
land, women also acted as Shamans, but in general these 
proto-priests were men. Evil spirits expelled at the end of 
winter are the objects of their special regard. Women go 
from house to house and stab these demons (Tuiia), as 
Greeks routed demons. The spirits escape through a hole 

1 Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, San Francisco, 
1882, iii. 151. 



RELIGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA ^1 

and are then corralled near a fire, around which sit men, 
who hear the charges against them and shoot them into the 
fire. The men then brush the infection ofif and rest easy 
till next year. Spirits are audible when ice-floes crack 
(noise-spirits), a crude form of phenomenal gods. 

But ghosts also disturb the Eskimos. They seek to enter 
warm houses when winter begins, as in Teutonic myth, and 
he whom they catch dies. Human ghosts chase men ; canine 
ghosts chase dogs. They bring all sorts of ills. There are 
also rock-spirits, hill-spirits, etc, A sort of animal-mythol- 
ogy has grown up in some parts of the North and the Cen- 
tral Eskimos have a Sedna, a spirit of ocean who controls 
seals, etc., which are her amputated fingers. Some Northern 
Eskimos believe in Tomassuk, a spirit who rules all spirits. 
Sedna is a sort of goddess. She supplies seals and, if they 
do not come, the wizard must find out who has offended her. 
She rises from the ground and is thought of as mistress of 
Adlivan, the underworld. To her and to her father go the 
dead. Yet, like any other demon, she is expelled when she 
comes from her place below ; a festival celebrates her re^ 
treat. But, as she is liable to rise again at any time, the 
Eskimos wear amulets to protect themselves from her. All 
spirits are propitiated by gifts of food and clothes. This is 
the only sacrifice, except that an atonement, introduced by a 
confession, is made to Sedna, when a no-work taboo has 
been violated. She is thus far a moral spirit. 

The brave go to a happy world and so do unfortunate 
women — a reward of valour and a compensation. Reli- 
gious motives and beginnings are thus not unknown; but 
magic predominates, while sympathetic magic is important. 
Ducks and ptarmigans, represented by youths born in sum- 
mer and winter, respectively, have a tug of war and the 
victory decides the coming season, whether mild or severe. 

Labrador Eskimos recognize the great evil Death as a 
spirit. Each individual, man or animal, has an owner- 
spirit and a ghost-spirit, which, when Death seizes him, 
enters another body; but also a third spirit which may go 



78 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

to another world or be annihilated. Each body-part has its 
own " soul." There are no really ethical spirits ; they are all 
bad or liable to become bad (hurtful) when offended. The 
souls of the brave, dancing as northern lights, are seen in 
the sky, where the moon hunts, but is not worshipped. 
Some Eskimos ascribe rain to urine from a " sky-woman." 
But there is no uniformity in belief or reports, since some 
are said to regard the sky as a cold place and the underworld 
as warm and comfortable, more desirable than the sky as a 
future residence. In the East, guardian spirits give the 
wizards power to mediate between men and spirits (a faint 
approach to Shamanism). The dead are buried anywhere; 
disregard of dress and hair and ceremonial idleness are the 
mourning-rites. Song is common but not religious. Dan- 
ish, Moravian, and Russian missionaries have destroyed or 
modified primitive belief among the Eskimos of Greenland, 
Labrador, and Alaska. The beliefs explained above, unless 
otherwise specified, are those of a more general character. 
Totemism has been found among them in a restricted area. 
The primitive animism and undeveloped Shamanism of 
these Eskimos are the underlying religious characteristics 
of most of the North American tribes. In the West, the 
Athapascan tribes have a crude belief in evil spirits ; south- 
ward they borrowed a higher culture. These tribes, notably 
the Navajo and the allied, not parent, stem of Apaches, set- 
tled in New Mexico in the fourteenth century, and in the 
seventeenth over-ran the Pueblos, from whom they took 
some cultural elements. Other northern tribes believe in 
sacred animals. Thus from the Columbia Thlinkits the cult 
of the Raven as master of life (or creator) has spread to 
the Plains. The Pueblos, Zunis, and Hopi, related to Cliff- 
dwellers and Mound-builders, belong to the Shoshoneans, 
as do the Diggers and Comanches, and are connected through 
the western tribes with the Nahuans-Aztecs, with whom 
they have in common an advanced zoolatry and nature- 
worship. An inner zone is made by the Siouan tribes 
(southern Atlantic states to the Mississippi, Crows and Da- 



RELIGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA 79 

kotas), broken into by the Apalachians or Muskhogean 
Creeks, Seminoles, and Chocktaws of the South and by the 
Louisiana Natchez. Within this zone again, all was Algon- 
kin from beyond the Canadian line to Tennessee and from 
Montana to Maine, except as the Algonkins themselves en- 
closed the Iroquois, whose earliest settlements extended 
along the basin of the St. Lawrence. The Algonkins in- 
cluded the northern Chippeways (not Athapascan), the 
western Cheyenne and Blackfeet, the Sacs, Foxes, Dela- 
ware Leni Lenape, and Shawnee, besides New England 
tribes, and are represented in history by Black Hawk, Poco- 
hontas (Powhatan), and King Philip. The Iroquois in- 
cluded the southern Cherokees, western Hurons, Susque- 
hannocks, and lesser tribes besides the Five Nations ^ of the 
Confederacy, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Cayugas, Onondagas, 
and Senecas. They occupied New York, Pennsylvania, 
Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and shared with the Siouans 
the Carolinas and Virginia. 

The ruder savages, both North and South, have in com- 
mon a vague conception of souls, a belief in ghosts and in 
animal-spirits and in the same nature-spirits recognized by 
the Greenlanders. Gods of higher phenomena are generally 
lacking in the outer circle, or are borrowed, but demons of 
wind, rain, and sea, for example, are recognized by the 
Caribs, and in Cuba the Tainos even had a sun-cult. The 
Floridas and Iroquois also revered the sun. The Siouan 
tribes, within the savage zone of Apaches and Comanches, 
have a primitive fire-cult, religious ritual, and perhaps phal- 
licism ; ^ while the still more advanced Algonkins have an 
elaborate culture-myth, and prayers for mercy and for for- 
giveness. Reasoning and talking beasts, lycanthropy, an- 
thropopathic vegetables, rocks, and rivers, belong in common 
to all the Northern tribes, the higher culture retaining the 

1 Afterwards six, as the Tuscaroras of Carolina joined the Con- 
federacy in 1712-15. The Wyandots (Huron-Eries) were first 
opposed and then subject to the Iroquois or " Iroquoians." 

2 The medicine-bags contained phallic material ; but the phallus 
is not the object of a special cult. 



8o THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

lower. Tutelary spirits as protecting gods were recognized 
by the higher tribes, not as always kind but as amiably dis- 
posed if not thwarted, to whom thanksgiving was made.^ 
But there was no fixed pantheon. 

The Caribs, from whose name comes the word cannibal, 
were only one of many bands of American cannibals. Can- 
nibalism here, however, was not religious. Like the sav- 
ages of the Amazon and of Fuego, the lowest races ate their 
friends and foes as an incidental food. In Darien men 
even ate their wives and children, and bred children to be 
eaten. There is here no " religious " thought of preserving 
individual or tribal strength; human beings were eaten as 
animals would be eaten. In the North, however, sacrifices 
were made of human victims, and after a war foes were 
eaten by the Iroquois and Algonkins, not merely as a food- 
supply, but from a magical motive, with a distinct idea of 
absorbing power. Thus the Pottawottomies, as late as 1812, 
cut up and distributed an Englishman to be eaten by the 
tribes as a magical sustenance. At the same time it is clear 
that even the Iroquois were on occasion mere irreligious can- 
nibals. The name Mohawk implies as much. 

Idolatry appears at its highest in the huge idols of the 
Aztecs (below) ; but it is not unknown among the Amazons, 
and in the Antilles there were grotesque but real parallels 
to the ancestral figures or tablets of the Chinese. Some of 
the northern tribes have a cult of tree-trunks resembling a 
man standing upright, a sort of xoonon.^ Totem-poles also 
are eidola of supposed ancestors. Some of the Plains In- 
dians had " dolls " (idols) and painted the evil spirit on one 
side of the wigwam and the good spirit on the other, to be 
safe on all sides. 

Totemism in America is of secondary character and offers 
no solution of the problem of its origin. This perhaps lies 

1 Francis Parkman, The Conspiracy of Pontiac, Boston, 1879, p. 
315. In expressing thanks there is a (pluti) prolongation of the 
cry, with resolved first vowel. 

2 Compare Reville, Religions des peuples non civilises, Paris, 
1883, and Catlin's North American Indian, London, 1845. 



RELIGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA 8l 

in the animal as food-supply, hence regarded as parent and 
a divinity ; at first eaten, then sanctified.^ The word, is said 
to mean " token." Properly it indicates a relationship be- 
tween a human and an animal group. The individual ani- 
mal is the helpful brother of the man and is of superhuman 
ability, often regarded as from the same ancestor, who is 
revered, but hardly as a god. Yet the animal may be 
revered without being a totem and the totem may be a mere 
badge. Magic ceremonies for procuring food among the 
Plains Indians are not totemistic. The great Iroquois and 
Algonkin tribes show no sure examples of totemism. The 
Algonkin Foxes had seven totems, but did not descend from 
any of them. The Cherokee killed his totem freely, though 
with a show of ceremony. The Pottawottomies ate their 
totem. Domestication of animals (the dog and bison) did 
not result in totemism. Among the Navajo and Apache 
tribes there are only faint traces of the practice. In gen- 
eral, in better organized communities and where food was 
easily obtained, there is less trace of totemism. What takes 
its place in the North West and among the Siouan tribes 
is the animal as a personal guardian. A young man selects 
an animal, guided to his selection by fasting and prayer, and 
after killing it regards the species as a totemic animal. 
But there is no natural relationship. So the Yukon Eskimo 
boy has a private guardian spirit-beast, as the Peruvian has 
a " brother " beast-image. The Siouan religious societies 
bear animal names, but their Dakotas and Omahas show 
only a possible survival of real totemism in tracing descent 
from certain animals. Vegetable totems occur in the Mid- 
dle West and East, but they are not " relatives " of the 
clans. About the only tribes having a cult of the dead as 
tutelary spirits are the Californians, Dakotas, and Zunis. 
A clan-ancestor may be an animal, mythological, not real 
with preposterous attributes and he may be pleased to see 

1 In the lowest totemism the totem is eaten regularly; then it is 
eaten ceremonially; then not eaten at all. See above, p. 52; also a 
paper by the writer in the Jour. Am. Or. Soc, 38, p. 1451, 1918. 



82 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

his descendants dance in skins like his, but this is an honour 
paid to a grandparent, not a general " ancestor-worship." 
The Redskin dead as a class are not worshipped with such a 
dance. So in South America there may be an ancestral 
clan-god, an animal or star, who is " danced " while ances- 
tors in general are ignored. Neither fear of ghosts nor a 
decent regard for the lately deceased is ancestor-worship; 
nor is general ancestor-worship proved by skin-clad or 
masked dancers. 

Totems favoured in Alaska are bear, wolf, whale, and 
frog. To the east all sorts of animals become totems but 
are also revered without being totems, such as the vulture, a 
California totem, raven, crane, owl, as lord of the dead, 
wolf, hare, and snake. Serpents, like pigeons, represent 
souls of the dead and Hurons and Algonkins regard the 
rattler or other " grandfather " snakes as their kin. 
Mound-serpents in the south-west represent tutelary earth- 
snakes. The Creek earth-snake, which was adopted by the 
Hurons, wore a gem on its head and its " horns " were big 
medicine. Conspicuous is the rain-serpent (lightning) as a 
fertility-demon associated with the thunder-bird, which Al- 
gonkin and Iroquois made into thunder-folk. Dogs were 
sacrificed to . the Lake-serpent. Mythical birds make the 
wind. 

Oneida means the place of the holy stone. Sleeping giants 
and profile rocks created historical myths, but, apart from 
these, there were potent stones just as rivers, waterfalls, etc., 
had each its potency and were revered with food and tobacco 
offerings, presented to the unknown power called Oki, Wa- 
kanda, or Orenda. To this class belongs the Manito, which 
in the East was sometimes a spirit but was generally syn- 
onymous with the vaguer Dakota Wakanda. 

There is in the North no philosophical religion till, among 
the Zuni, Awonawilona " evolves from himself the imi- 
verse," and he is probably not wholly a native god. The 
powers spiritual were controlled largely by medicine-men, 
who assisted the chiefs at the festivals of moon and maize. 



RELIGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA 83 

and at dances for war, crops, and hunting. Even the ad- 
vanced Hopi, who were related to the Zuni and revered sun, 
moon, fire, rain, and mother Earth, had no Supreme Spirit. 
Still less did the northern tribes have this idea. 

It is a common belief that the Algonkins and Iroquois 
revered a Great Spirit as God. But what happened in 
Africa happened in America. The good missionaries took 
Tantum and Squantum as " good and evil " spirits. But 
Tantum is merely " a great spirit," Manit, and Squantum is 
an angry spirit. Among the Passamaquoddies this *' dual- 
ism " expressed itself in the form of an Evil Wolf and a 
"good-natured Liar," a clownish spirit who deceived his 
foes like Ulysses and like him got a reputation for it. Yet 
this Liar, Kuloskap, has also been enlisted as a proof that 
the natural Indian had a God. Natural Indian, because the 
Indian of today, especially when he is a college-graduate, 
is no more a natural expression of Redskin belief than Mr, 
Batchelor's Ainu expresses that savage's original concep- 
tion of spirit. The Redskin, it is said, " sought the soli- 
tude and there communed with God." When an Indian 
sought the solitude for spiritual aid it was to get a vision 
of some animal that would serve as a totem or to consult 
with the Great Hare, or some other culture-hero, or to 
drum up weather. This Kuloskap, for example, was 
father and model of the "drummers" (wizards), who 
could govern the weather, cast spells, sink below earth's 
surface, become serpents, and in this guise approach women. 
The eastern Algonkins believed in any number of small 
spirits ; they saw a spirit in every tree and waterfall, but, till 
the missionaries discovered him, they never conceived of 
God.^ 

In general, real gods are few in the North. One tribe 
usually has four or five, the Four Winds and an animal- 

iThe two Algonkin spirits called Mechee and Gechee, who live 
respectively in a cave-hell and a solar-boat heaven, and the Two 
Brothers, whose son guides souls to hell and is the divine son of 
a " woman from heaven " are a mixture of native and missionary 
ideas. 



84 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Spirit regarded as the ancestral hero.^ Totemism, zoolatry, 
and Shamanism characterize the cult; polytheism and ad- 
vanced solar worship belong to the South. Real ancestor- 
worship is not a marked American trait. The cult of a 
Michabo or Hiawatha has long enough been mistaken for 
the " worship of a Supreme Spirit of Light." 

These two beings are typical. Michabo was not a light- 
god but an idealized animal; while Hiawatha (Iroquoian) 
was possibly a real man, though also idealized. Creator- 
animals, however, are sometimes more than one, even in the 
same tribe. Thus the Mohegans had three, bear, deer, and 
wolf. Michabo of the Algonkins resembles the culture-god 
of Mexico, snake, sun, and hero all in one. Stories of cre- 
ation result in many myths of origin, several deluge-tales, 
and a general theory of troglodyte ancestors, which last may 
contain historical truth. The Shawnees are the only In- 
dians who think they came from another land, led across a 
flood by the Turtle. Myths of creation led to many reli- 
gious spectacles of dramatic form. Direct descent from a 
dog was claimed by the Digger Indians. Similar origins are 
ascribed to various tribes, but the totem, as already ex- 
plained, is not identical with the ancestor. 

In matrilinear tribes certain deities belong to women, 
who have the charge of sundry rites, as among the Iro- 
quois.^ Tutelary powers are opposed to those who use 
their Orenda for an evil purpose, that is, disadvantageous 
to the individual or tribe. Sacrifice thus becomes an at- 
tempt to secure power; communion with the deity is an 
occult rite for the same end. 

The priesthood of the Indians ranged from medicine-man 

iFor example, Michabo. It is this spirit that Dr. Brinton re- 
garded as "god of light" and on the strength of which he postu- 
lated moral dualism. 

2 The Iroquois were especially regardful of women ; property- 
was inherited through them; they had charge of rites in connexion 
with the earth-power and the " wise women," as in Germany, were 
consulted by the chiefs. The murder of a woman cast twice that 
of a man. 



RELIGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA 85 

to chief pontiff, according to the general culture of the 
tribe. Among the ruder northern tribes there was no regu- 
lar corporation of priests, only irregular jugglers and medi- 
cine-men. The Nez Perce among the Shahaptians had he- 
reditary priests, but these Indians were more cultivated than 
the surrounding Chinooks, although without agriculture and 
living in communal houses like the Chinooks. Among the 
Pueblos, on the other hand, there was a war-chief and a 
peace-chief or priest, the latter being assisted by magicians, 
and cult-societies having mythic traditions and a religious 
pharmacopia. Among the Muskhogeans, the Choktaws 
had a priesthood handed down from father to son without 
restriction, whereas the Nez Perce priests were both male 
and female and the priesthood was limited to priests who 
gave favourable prognostications. The war-chief was os- 
tensibly the master of the medicine-man; but in times of 
religious activity he never did anything without the latter's 
consent. The Algonkin Shawnees kept the priesthood in 
one family or totem clan, as did the Iroquois Cherokees, till 
the insolence of one family, the Nicotani, thus honoured, 
became so great that the tribe slaughtered every member 
of the family and handed over the priesthood to another. 
The Chippeway (Algonkins) had a college of elders, but it 
was more a historical society than a religious priesthood, 
though it contained priests. The nearest approach to a 
departmental priesthood in the North was the distinction 
made by the Algonkins between the conjurer, Meda, the 
prophet, Jossakid, and the ordinary medicine-man, Wau- 
beno; and the distinction made by the Iroquois between 
men and women as priests or medicine-men of spirits in 
general and priestesses of earth-powers. 

In the cult, the most universal elements were prayer, 
smoke, sacrifice, fast, bath, and dance. Prayer accompa- 
nied initiations and was exercised on ordinary occasions, 
when offerings were made or wishes were directed to the 
gods. It was often no more than a series of ejaculations, 
sometimes a silent meditation. The simplest sacrifice was 



S6 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

the daily offering of smoke, which lent also a religious force 
to the peace-pipe. The Indian offered four puffs to the 
Four Winds or Directions, which, with the national Hare, 
were the only real gods recognized by the eastern Algonkins 
in 1626. The god of war was worshipped by the Iroquois 
with human victims (as were the ghosts) and such a god 
was recognized also by the Pueblos.^ Ordinary sacrifices 
were those of food or dogs and other animals. 

Cult and mythology are influenced by the number four, 
which represents the cardinal points or four winds as benefi- 
cent spirits of the sky in antithesis to earth. A Siouan boy 
is placed upon a stone representing earth and then the priest 
prays to each of these Four Gods of Weal in his behalf. 
Four is a holy number with the Sioux, Algonkins, etc. 
Clan-divisions and religious dances are found among the 
Northern Indians in fours and eights ; four or eight ances- 
tral beings are named by the Navajos, Shawnees, Iroquois, 
etc. 

The fast and bath often went together, purgation, some- 
times medicinal, by fasting being followed by a ceremonial 
bath, either in the form of a sweat-bath for the individual 
or a bath in a lake or river by a tribe at certain seasons. 
This religious exercise, to expel demons, was also medici- 
nal. Disease and evil went away on the water. After 
burial, infection was washed away by the Navajo. The 
Cherokees, like the Aztecs, Mayas, and Peruvians, had a 
form of baptism, when the name was given. Baptismal 
sprinkling, that the child might be " born again," horrified 
early missionaries. Water-cult, apart from the bath, is uni- 
versal (worship of stream, waterfall, etc.). But one aspect 
of water, the Fountain of Youth, was not indigenous; only 
healing springs were known. 

1 The Pueblos were influenced by Spanish and perhaps by Mexican 
cuhure and their reHgion is probably not all native. They wor- 
shipped a god of light, of war, earth-gods, sky-gods, a goddess of 
love (Mexican?), and master of life, as a group of great gods 
ranged over countless lesser spirits of nature (as well as ghosts). 



RELIGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA 87 

The fast also introduced the dance, producing an ec- 
static state. The dance was of universal religious appli- 
cation; it was accompanied by song, the latter occasionally 
recognized as praise of a god, but usually of historical char- 
acter, when not a mere ululation. Religious dances, known 
in the North on all festive and warlike occasions, were elab- 
orated in the South, but even in the North they led to dra- 
matic shows, such as Penn describes as " antics," that is,- 
round dances with song and pantomime. The Pueblo Ca- 
chinas were regular dramatic dances, representing creation 
and other serious mysteries, performed by masked act- 
ors (priests) with a public chorus. Exorcising, conjuring, 
and dancing all went together among the Algonkins, 
whose tribal hero Michabo was adept at all these perform- 
ances. 

The cult as a whole is apotropaic but, at the same tirne, 
propitiatory and largely for the purpose of gain. As pro- 
pitiatory is to be regarded the simple prayer or offering 
with which the Indian reacts to the supposed presence of a 
possibly inimical power, on sight of a new phenomenon of 
impressive character. For gain, prayer and sacrifice are 
offered to tutelary powers not naturally inimical. In fast- 
ing and prayer together there is also the feeling of entering 
into communion with the spirit, especially a totem-spirit. 
It is difficult to determine whether religious expression is 
ethical ; thanksgiving appears only in the highest forms of 
native religion. Some certain expression thereof is attrib- 
uted to the Iroquois, but the ruder savages, those on the 
western coast, do not know what it is to be thankful even 
to man, much less to spirits. Probably the highest expres- 
sion is the prayer for mercy and help, e. g. of the Algonkin ; 
or, as do ut des, of the Iroquois Huron : *' Spirit of this 
place, we give thee tobacco ; so help us, save us from the 
enemy, bring us wealth, bring us back safely." 

American eschatology ranges all the way from agnosticism 
to the joyous certainty of the Sioux, who believe in three 
souls and a heaven 



88 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Where game is always plentiful 

And winter knows no cold, 
Where trees will bear perennial fruit, 

And squaws will never scold. 

Occasionally there is found a tribe without notion of 
future life. Thus an Oregon tribe (Pend d'Oreilles) be- 
lieves in the guardian spirit and in a divine old woman, 
the cause of all their woes (also a belief of India and 
Yezo), but has no word for soul and no conception of a 
future life. The soul to most Indians is " shadow " or 
" breath," but vital forces or souls were often multiplied. 
The Siouan '* third soul " either went to the heaven de- 
scribed above or to a temporary hell or purgatory, where 
trees bear only icicles. Thence returning, however, it came 
to earth and received a new chance, but, if again wicked, re- 
turned to hell. The more civilized Algonkins and Iroquois 
believed in two souls, one remaining at the grave and one 
going to the (Huron) Happy Hunting Ground, unless it 
was a weak, evil soul, when it failed to get anywhere. 
Some Oregon tribes had a soul in every part of the body 
and the island Caribs likewise imagined a soul in every 
pulsation. 

The spirit took four days to reach its goal and was lighted 
thither by torches, lit by the mourners, which also served 
to terrify evil spirits (like our corpse candles). Bones were 
collected with a view to resurrection. Buried articles were 
broken, to " kill " them, as in India. The passage to the next 
world among the Hopi was by the underground Colorado 
canon, out of which the tribe originally emerged. Often 
there is a log to cross over a swamp and automatically the 
coward (sinner) falls into the mud and disappears for ever, 
while the brave goes to glory. The parted way was marked 
for some Algonkins by a lightning-flash and by the appear- 
ance of a spirit to lead the good to bliss (cf. the Persian 
Bridge). In the West, the Athapascans suspended the dead 
on poles ; the Chilcoots buried, and the Babines cremated the 
corpse. Some of the Plains Indians also placed the dead on 



RELIGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA 89 

trees or a staging. The Algonkins burned the great, know- 
ing that they would go to heaven ; but doubtful or ordinary 
people were buried, that they might come back after staying 
with the shades and, finding their growth-soul ghost amid 
their bones, be reincarnated in human form. It was this 
growth-soul that was eaten by foes for nutrition of soul in 
themselves. The soul-strength in the hair was thus carried 
off by scalping; the scalped brave being the slave of the 
scalper in the next life. If mean shades were not drowned 
in mud they led the life suitable to cowards and dis- 
eased people. The Huron's bridge to the next world was 
guarded by a dog; a common notion, based on the obvious 
fact that dogs eat the dead. Algonkins and Dakotas 
(Siouan) believed in a snake-bridge to heaven, perhaps the 
Milky Way. Coast-dwelling Athapascans thought a boat 
conveyed souls. Animal metempsychosis after death was 
not usually recognized, though always possible; in life a 
medicine-man could become an animal (were-wolf). The 
Siouan Dakotas believed that, to become a first-class wizard, 
one must have been reincarnated four times in the same 
body, " dreaming of gods between times," when borne about 
by winds, and thus learning occult secrets. In this way 
they also imbibed the sacred language of the spirits.^ 

The general marks of mourning were mutilations, break- 
ing of finger-joints, gnashing, discarding of ornaments, 
blackening the face, sacrifice of property, and putting clay 
upon the head. The hair was unbound, sometimes cut off 
and thrown into the grave. Hair-cult is a marked feature.^ 

- All the way from Algonkin to Aztec the wizard affects a secret 
language described as "affected." Probably it was like the Hindu 
" god-language " (old dialect) , but also it was enunciated in a " bird- 
voice," an unintelligible murmur. Generally, a divine voice is a low 
confused sound, not like the voice of gods in India, who shout 
with a deafening noise, unless they are disguised, probably because 
they are still natural phenomena. 

2 Hair is an index of vigour, vitality, ability. Hence the Mandan 
(Siouan) with the longest hair became chief. Horse-hairs were 
sometimes utilized to lengthen a man's own hair and aid him in 
securing leadership. 



90 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

To insure life it was buried in deep vegetation or hung upon 
trees. Widows mourned by cutting off their hair, eating 
Httle, and screaming a good deal. Some tribes slaughtered 
dogs and slaves at the grave. 

It will be advantageous in conclusion to turn from the 
general or universal characteristics of American religion to 
a more special consideration of some higher groups. As we 
have seen, in the case of the Iroquois, to gain Orenda 
(spirit-power) is the object of sacrifice. Tutelary powers 
are thus implicitly opposed to spirits using Orenda for evil. 
The festivals of light and of maize first drive away sin 
(evil) and then induce weal. The sacrifice with a dog is 
for the purpose of revitalizing the powers of life ; hence too 
the old fire is renovated. The god of life is at the same time 
the god of vegetation and in Iroquois religion he stands op- 
posed to the god of winter and death. A number of gods 
are solely nature-powers, Wind, Dawn, Fire-dragon, etc. 
From such a religion we can draw but one conclusion, that 
nature as exhibited in phenomena is deified by savages, who 
do actually feel themselves encompassed and protected by 
nature-spirits, with whom man may become allied and with 
whom he may commune. The Cherokees (Iroquois) may 
be described as polytheistic zoolatrists, perhaps totemic, 
who, while they recognized an antithesis of good and evil 
powers, knew nothing of an Evil Spirit as opposed to a Su- 
preme Spirit, till taught otherwise by the whites. They 
had no idea of God, Devil, Heaven, or Hell as ethical con- 
ceptions. They had tribal gods living above the visible sky, 
but these were neither good nor evil. They connect closely 
with the Aztecs in believing in animal types as divinities 
and interpreting nature in animal terms, the lightning being 
a horned serpent, the hawk, dog, and spider as divinities 
being archetypical types of the corresponding actual ani- 
mals, and the rabbit being an ideal spirit. Further, 
they resemble the Aztecs in worshipping elemental gods, 
sun, fire, water, etc., and natural objects such as stones, 
and in ascribing divine nature to a plant (ginseng), while 



RELIGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA 9^ 

they regarded as a Red Man the phenomenon of lightning- 
thunder.^ 

Of the Algonkins sufficient has been said in general; but 
some traits of the Cheyenne may be noticed, as the sun- 
dance here gives a vivid picture of that mixture of prayer 
and magic which is found in most fertility rites. It also 
shows that the cult of the sun in this form is a cult of phe 
nomena, not of ghosts. The rite unites war and fertility 
The sun-dance is to reanimate nature, vegetal and animal. 
This is and always has been the chief religious rite of the 
Indians; it may be called Nature's renascence. The rite 
of the Cheyenne is not, like that of the Siouans, a tribal, 
but an individual act a vow fulfilled in return for a dan- 
ger escaped. Its ceremonial constituents are the pipe, dance, 
song, and sweat-bath, aided by the rattle, drum, and paint. 
The rite is one of sympathetic magic but is united with a call 
for divine assistance. Thus, at the Fifth Paint, the priest 
spreads the sacrificial straw, or sage-brush bunches, in four 
heaps around the altar and in one for the sun. The four 
are of course for the direction-spirits. On these dances 
the patron (maker of the New Lodge of Life), praying to 
the Four and to the sun, while others sing and offerings are 
made; in conclusion they give thanks (to the gods). The 
same spirit infuses the general dance of the people, who 
dance through sundry songs till they are reeling and stag- 
gering in an effort to attain to the Four Gods of direction. 
They break the fast with purification by purgation and a 
sweat-bath, and with the ritual pipe. Painted lines on the 
body represent sun, moon, and stars and are " roads of 
prayer " to the heart. Torture by suspension is now prac- 
tised in a modified form by the Cheyenne ; formerly it was 
undoubtedly the custom to swing with the sun; the object of 
the whole rite being to perpetuate the life of the tribe, as a 
dramatic representation of creation or rather re-creation, 

1 Their religious-medicinal " literature " was reduced to writing 
by a native, " Sequoyah," in 182 1. These Cherokees are southern 
Iroquois of Virginia (now removed). 



92 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

to renew life in answer to the prayer of him who has vowed 
the rite in the name of the tribe. It is the Great (Medicine) 
Spirit that answers this prayer. The rite was taught them 
of old by their culture hero. 

As we approach Mexico we come nearer to the cult and 
belief of the tribes of Central and Southern America. 
Among the ceremonies of the Hopi are to be observed the 
rites at the winter solstice: maize, chewed first (saliva as 
strength),^ is put into a bowl containing heart-powder and 
other ingredients ; meal is cast into the air, like smoke, for 
an offering to deities; asperging, smoke, fast, song, dance, 
and prayer make the rite. The dance is here widdershins, 
against the sun, because the dancer heads to the place of de- 
parted spirits. Masks with frog-figures for fertility are 
worn by men dramatically suggesting human fertility scenes ; 
the god of generation appears decked with corn and rain- 
and sun-signs with actual vegetables attached, around whom 
dance the group. Drums, whistles, rattles, and crook entice 
rain; willow-wands with feathers are fastened to or placed 
near animals and trees " for increase." The four direction- 
spirits are represented by colours. North, yellow; West, 
green ; South, red ; East, white ; but '* above " and " below " 
are here added (black and variegated). Corn and rain- 
rites here prevail, not ghost-rites, of which there is scarcely 
a trace, except food placed at the grave. Symbolism re- 
mains from magic (smoke as a cloud, drenching with 
water). Like Mexican belief is that in the Plumed Serpent, 
the male counterpart of Mother Earth, a god of the under- 
world ; and that in the ancestral culture hero. Peculiar and 
interesting is the phenomenon of paired gods, each male 
having its female form or being androgynous, rarely two 
males ; but, as in Mexico, there are two brother suns. Such 
a pair, as ancestors of the race, is worshipped ; but the cult 

^Thus in the preparation of the Peruvian intoxicant acca, the 
maize is first chewed by women, then boiled and fermented (the 
saliva is "medicinal"). Markham, Incas of Peru, London, 191 1, 
p. 127. 



RELIGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA 93 

of an originating pair of this sort by no means implies a 
general " worship of the souls of the dead," as Fewkes 
thinks.^ Noticeable too is the Hopi idea of the sky as a 
bird-man or bird-snake. Sacrifice is made mainly to deities, 
as in Mexico, and Southern also is the form of ritual puri- 
fication. These elements unite or bridge the religions of 
North and South, as the Algonkin sun-rite of torture and 
the Siouan swing-rite, to strengthen the sun, lead to Aztec 
heliolatry. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

H. J. Rink, The Eskimo Tribes, Copenhagen, 1887; Tales and 
Traditions of the Eskimo, London, 1875. 

Franz Boas, in Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal So- 
ciety of Canada; The Central Eskimo, 1888; notes on 
Indians also in The Mind of Primitive Man, New York, 
1911. 

L. M. Turner, Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, Sixth, 1888, 
and Eleventh, 1894, Reports. 

Knud Rasmussen, People of the Polar North, London, 1908. 

D. G. Brinton, The Myths of the New World, Philadelphia, 
1896. 

G. A. Dorsey, in Field Columbian Publications, 1901, on the 
sun-dance, etc. ; also Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology, 
1894-95, 1897-98, on the Hopi and other tribes. 

Alice C. Fletcher, Indian Ceremonies, Washington, 1883, and 
The Import of the Totem, 1897. 

J. G. Miiller, Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen, 
Basel, 1855-1907. 

F. T. Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvolker, iii and iv, Leip- 
zig, 1862. 

H. H. Bancroft, The Native Races of the PaciHc States, San 
Francisco, 1882-83. 

H. R. Schoolcraft, The American Indians, Buffalo, 185 1 ; The 
Myth of Hiawatha, Philadelphia, 1856. 

Relations des lesuits, en la nouvelle France, Quebec, 1858 ; 
invaluable reports of the missionaries from 1611-1645. 

George Catlin, Illustrations of the Manners . . . of the North 
American Indians, London, 1845. A vivid narrative val- 
uable for its record of religious customs. 

A. A. Goldenweiser, Totemism, An Analytical Study, lourn. 
Am. Folklore, xxiii, 1910. 

^lournal of Am. Folklore, xi. 194. 



CHAPTER SEVEN 

RELIGIONS OF MEXICO, CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA 

Cultural centres are found in Mexico, Yucatan, Guate- 
mala, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru; their interrelation is 
not certain. An opinion widely disseminated is that they 
were originally independent growths and that later some of 
them united to form a new syncretistic religion. Others 
imagine external influence imported across the ocean. A 
third opinion is that each of these local religions has been 
more or less influenced by immigration from the north, af- 
fected by, and in turn affecting, the native local religion. 
The Guatemala Quiches were related to the Yucatan Mayas, 
who seem in turn to be remotely connected with the Indians 
of the Antilles and the Louisiana Natchez, as the Bahama 
Indians are related to the littoral Brazilians and Vene- 
zuelans. The Mayas had old settlements about Vera Cruz 
and elsewhere in Mexico. On the western coast, a branch 
of the Shoshoneans appears to have drifted south in suc- 
cessive waves of immigration, until, ascending the Mexican 
table-lands, they pressed back the anterior Mayan culture. 
These savage invaders were the Nahuans, a branch of whom 
is represented later by the Aztecs. They absorbed more or 
less of the older culture called Toltec, either Nahuan or 
that of the Maya (Totonac or Huaxtecan on the eastern 
coast) and their advent may be referred to about the sixth 
century a. d. But the ruder Nahuans (Chichimec) were 
absorbed by the Aztec confederacy in the fifteenth century. 
In the western part of Mexico the Zapotec, like the Mixtec, 
represent a pre- Aztec civilization (Nahuan or Mayan). 
From this western coast it is possible that emigrants by sea 
affected the culture of the coast of Ecuador and Peru. 

94 



RELIGION OF CENTRAL AMERICA 95 

Maya (Quiche) civilization can be traced back to 400, 
possibly 200 A. D.^ and is represented by the culture of Vera 
Cruz, Copan in Honduras, Quiriga in Guatemala, and Maya- 
pan in Yucatan. It here includes the allied Quiche culture. 
Thus the same god appears with different names. Tohil is 
a Quiche culture-god appearing as a thunder-god but cor- 
responding to the Votan of Tabasco and to the Yucatan 
Kukulkan, who in turn is the literal equivalent of the Aztec 
Quetzalcoatl, the '' feathered serpent," a culture-hero dei- 
fied and identified with the god of peaceful civilization. In 
Maya tradition, Kukulkan was a wise man who led his peo- 
ple and finally departed from Mayapan in Yucatan in a 
western direction, that is, to Mexico. He is said to have 
come to Chichen Itza and then to have founded a new town 
(Mayapan) and built a great temple (Chakanputan), after 
framing laws and making the wonderful calendar, which 
still remains as a monument of Mayan intelligence. His 
symbols, bird and serpent, unite the ideas of air and water 
(the serpent as water and fertilizing power) into one con- 
ception of light and life, as a bird alone regularly represents 
the Yucatan sun-god and a snake the water-god. 

Even more important is the Mayan '' father of gods and 
men," who came from the East and appears as a god of 
healing as well as of creating. This was Itzamna, whose 
spouse was Ixchel, the Rainbow, goddess of birth and medi^- 
cine. Itzamna was later identified with the Eastern Sun 
and represented life and knowledge. He was the arch- 
priest and inventor of writing and books. Next in impor- 
tance stand the gods of agriculture. There was a maize- 
deity, from whose head sprouted corn, and four giants or 
gods of agriculture supported the sky. The agricultural 
deities were more important than in Mexico, though of kin- 
dred sort. They were the great Chac and several subordi- 
nate little Chacs. Like Tlaloc in Mexico, Chac was first of 
all a thunder-god. Another fertility god of the Mayas 

1 S. G. Morley, Bureau of American Ethnology, 1915, thinks 
that Mayan civilization was " fairly on its feet " by 200 a. d. 



96 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Steals maize, as does Tlaloc, and like Tlaloc the Maya gods 
of this class carry axes, symbol of thunder-gods, and are 
associated with the (also Northern) rain-serpent. 

A marked feature of Mayan religion is the number of 
goddesses, who, as in Celtic religion, appear as patronesses 
of arts, as of jade-culture, of fabric-colouring, etc., as well 
as patronesses of hunting and even of suicide, a death that 
was estimable and led to heaven. Animals were revered 
and even vegetables were supposed to be animate and con- 
sequently worthy of religious consideration. But, to get 
increase, all animals had to be sacrificed by proxy, that is, 
one of each species was killed at a great spring celebration. 
With the same object, there was a celebration at which once 
a year objects were renewed; as the fire was also extin- 
guished and renewed. Although by far not so blood-lusty 
as the Aztecs, the Mayas with their typical incense-offering 
had many animal sacrifices, in which the heart of the vic- 
tim was seized and burned. A dog here usually, as in the 
North, takes the place of the Aztec human victim, espe- 
cially as an offering to the fire-god. Several Mexican 
customs were eventually adopted by the Mayas, such as the 
use of the bow in battle, the shooting, as a sacrifice, of war- 
captives, and probably even the custom of offering human 
victims. Each department of industry had its peculiar god 
and the general affairs of men had each its own divinity. 
Thus the god of travellers was the North Star ; hunters and 
fishers of Yucatan had special gods; while disease-gods 
were generally venerated. A number of gods presided over 
evil and death. With the great death-god, called Skull and 
Bones, were associated sundry war-gods, who presided not 
only over war but also over sacrifice. 

The Mayans, like the Vedic Aryans, looked upon heaven 
as a restful place under a sacred tree ; hell to them was a 
cold subterranean place past the four rivers (directions) 
of four colours, where lived lords forever tormenting earth- 
growths above them. This place in Quiche is called Xibalba, 
but another Mayan name is Mitnal, ruled by its like-named 



RELIGION OF CENTRAL AMERICA 97 

god, the same with the Aztec Mictlan and its special ruler. 
Owls and bats were the special birds of hell and served as 
ghostly messengers. 

Noticeable is the fact that the high priest was originally 
the ruler ; and that the war-chief, elected for a term of four 
years, was revered like a god ; also, that war-god feasts are 
virtually fertility-sacrifices, the canine victim's heart being 
then magically treated for the express purpose of securing 
rain. The dance, with which for five days the fertility-fes- 
tival concluded, was without application to ghost-cult. The 
canine victim appears at all sorts of sacrifices, even at that 
to Hobnil, god of bee-hives. Blood-spilling, except at sac- 
rifice, was regarded as displeasing to the gods, and a pro- 
pitiatory bloodless offering was made by hunters to offset 
their necessary disregard of this fact. 

Festivals were marked by singing and dancing and at 
times, as at a feast for luck in war, by the drunken orgies 
which characterize those of Peru. The year was well filled 
with festivals, especially at its beginning and in the spring. 
Like the Aztecs and South Americans, the Mayans had tra- 
ditions of creation and deluge. Kukulkan, who was cele- 
brated with dancing and song, was one of the creators and 
the Quiche Hurakan was another.^ Men were made after 
animals, of clay ; but they were so unintelligent that the gods 
drowned them in a deluge. They that escaped became mon- 
keys. A second creation then made men of maize ; the gen- 
eral tradition is that men were eventually compounded of 
maize and blood. 

Fasting for thirteen days, with a new fire, marked the 
beginning of the year, in July, when incense and other means 
of purification were employed in the temples.^ The object 

1 Pecuh'ar is a religious dance on stilts in honour of Itzamna, to 
avert disease and other evils. From a related West-Indian form of 
Hurakan (god of storm and fertility) is derived English hurricane. 

2 The temples of stone still show the marks of derivation from 
wooden structures. Wooden idols were regarded as holier than 
stone, probably because earlier, and they too were purified for the 
new year in an elaborate rite. 



98 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

of all Mayan rites was to avert divine w^rath and gain " food, 
health, and long life " from the spirits. In general, the 
Mayan religion resembles that of Peru rather than that of 
Mexico; its temples and its predominatingly agricultural 
aspects are more like those of the Peruvian Chimus than 
those of the Nahuan Aztecs. On the other hand, Mayan 
religion is in close touch historically with that of the Aztecs 
and has a similar mythology, especially in regard to its cul- 
ture-gods. 

Exactly what was the connection between these different 
groups only specialists may say, and they disagree. Prob- 
ably the pre-Aztec Nahuan was nearer to the Mayan than 
was the Aztec. The Nahuans were originally nomads op- 
posed to the sedentary agriculturists they overcame, but as 
so often happens they were culturally overcome themselves 
by the conquered. The Aztecs, however, retained much of 
their own savagery, for instance the practice of shooting 
war-captives as sacrificial victims. Their religion thus con- 
sists of two early elements, worship of nomadic and of 
agricultural deities, to which is later added the cult of 
priestly creations, mystic deities. 

The earliest Mexican cult, of springs, lakes, etc., has left 
a few traces. A " salt goddess " was celebrated in summer ; 
cave-temples, some oracular, and human sacrifices were 
known to the Mixtec and Zapotec tribes. Agricultural dei- 
ties were generally female or androgynous, sometimes asso- 
ciated with, perhaps later, male deities, whose wives or 
sisters they have become. So the original Maize goddess, 
Chicome Coatl, Is reckoned a sister of Tlaloc, whose victims 
were flayed. Centeotl, primarily a female, became " son " 
of Tozi. She held in her arms her daughter, Young 
Corn (Xilonen), in whose honour were performed rain- 
dances in June.^ On the west coast, Cueravahperi was a 

1 Centeotl was called Lady Serpent and Mother ("grand- 
mother"). Her victims were first made to scatter maize; then they 
were flayed and the pieces of their bodies were used as fertility- 
charms. Flaying, for sacrifice, began in the eleventh century. 
Human sacrifice was already "Toltec" (very ancient). With 



RELIGION OF MEXICO 99 

fertility-goddess, whose victims' hearts brought rain. Char- 
acteristic of these cruel females is the flaying of their human 
victims, whose skins were then worn by their dancing 
priests, an inchoate vegetation drama, analogous to the duck- 
ptarmigan contest of the Eskimos and the similar but veiled 
performances in higher religions. Here at least there is 
no question of ghosts. The last-named fertility-goddess 
offers an illuminating example of divine expansion. As fe- 
male spirit of fertility, she became the deity of maize and 
other plants, including medicinal herbs ; hence patroness of 
physicians and midwives and of the hot bath ; while as food- 
mother she was exalted as mother of the gods, and clothed in 
serpents as fertility-signs. At the maize festival, the maize 
itself was first decapitated and then the victims, represent- 
ing maize, were also decapitated ; after which their hearts 
were cast into hot springs, to produce rain-clouds. Her 
festivals were in March and April, but also later, as if to 
renew her waning strength. 

The oldest Nahuan human sacrifice merely had the vic- 
tims' blood enhance vegetation by falling on the ground as 
they were shot. Fertility in a wider sense had two repre- 
sentatives, a love-goddess called Xochi-quetzal, wife of 
Tlaloc and stolen by the Nahuan god Tezcatlipoca, and the 
Huaxtec goddess Tlazolteotl. The former was a corn or 
earth-spirit, and patroness of love, flowers, and embroidery. 
The latter represented an odd combination, being goddess of 
sensuality, confession, and penitence ; she may have had 
lunar associations. The moon, son of Tlaloc, was a birth- 
god associated with the special Rabbit-gods of fertility. 
Gods and goddesses, connected both with moon and harvest, 
also represented the octli (agave, aloe) and other intoxicat- 
ing plants. They are expressly called countless because 
" there are countless ways of getting drunk." ^ The reli- 

Xilonen, compare the Greek Kore ; compare also the Greek custom 
of the adoption of agricultural female spirits by the later gods, 
Hera by Zeus, etc. 

1 Literally " four hundred rabbits," i.e., countless fertility-spirits. 



100 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

gious importance of intoxication lies in its giving com- 
munion with the deity by ecstasy, in contrast to communion 
by eating the god. The Totonac custom of eating dough 
images of the god implied the latter communion ; which was 
more drastically effected also by eating the victim offered to 
and hence identified with, the deity; whereas the tobacco- 
communion (in Tarascan) was a form of drunkenness-ec- 
stasy. Ordinary drunkenness was not approved. Even a 
god, in Tarascan, was thrown out of heaven because of his 
drunken habits. As with Hephaistus, the fall made him 
lame. 

All these fertility-demons, the octli-demons and higher 
spirits, were under Tlaloc, the greatest god of the early 
period, to whom were sacrificed a man, representing the 
male serpent-god, and four women, representing Mayauel, 
Xochi-quetzal, and other fertility-goddesses. He is the god 
of the Eastern Paradise (Tlalocan), where warriors go,^ 
and, as rain-god, presides over the dropsical and drowned; 
but also, as thunder- and lightning-god, he has a mountain 
dance-festival. He has but one eye and his victim's heart 
is cast into a lake; that is, his water-nature was perhaps 
originally part of his general sky-nature (sun as eye?). A 
pre-Aztec god, he was worshipped, over all Mexico and be- 
yond it, as a god especially connected with serpents and fer- 
tility. His assistants, the Tlaloque, emptied celestial vases, 
smiting them with noisy rods (compare the Vedic Parjanya; 
rain and thunder). When it is said that, despite his general 
beneficence, he " stole the maize," we may assume that he 

One of these, Mayauel, wife of Patecatl, was worshipped by the 
Huaztecs, notorious drunkards, as having four hundred breasts. 
This was the form of the maize-mother Centeotl and seems to 
show that Mayauel also was originally a general fertility-goddess, 
later restricted to an octli-deity. Like Ayopechtli, the birth-goddess, 
she rides a tortoise. Xochi-quetzal (above) as a male (Xochipilli) 
deity is god of flowers, dance, song, and games, and becomes a 
sun-god. 

^ Women who die in childbirth go to the Western Paradise. In 
Borneo the two classes, of heroes and such heroines, go to one 
paradise and marry ! 



RELIGION OF MEXICO lOI 

stole it from a precedent deity. At his May festival, his 
priests might steal from any one; they quacked like frogs. 
His wife bears him cloud-children. He alone has five of the 
annual twenty-five festivals. Before his image his wor- 
shippers, clad in animal-skins, danced a ceremonial dance 
once in eight years ; while before the god stood a tank full 
of snakes and frogs, caught in the mouth by Mazatec (dis- 
trict) men, who then, like the Pueblos, danced, holding 
these reptiles in the mouth.^ His later wife was Running 
Water; small figures called Tepictoton, representing moun- 
tains, were sacred to him.^ His first wife. Earth, was stolen 
by the Aztec god (above). His most pitiable victims were 
troops of little children who (first in 1018) were made to 
weep when driven to be sacrificed, that their tears might 
make more rain in the February ritual. In the later Aztec 
myth of ages, Tlaloc is allotted first place after the two 
Aztec gods, as " third sun " (era), which shows that before 
Aztec dominion he was really the first. 

The myth of the Five Ages was pre- Aztec and originally 
portrayed ages of Earth, Fire, Air, and Water, leading to 
the present fifth age. When the Aztec gods were all con- 
verted into forms of the sun, Tlaloc was also so converted, 
the ages were then termed " suns," and the second and third 
ages were inverted, perhaps to give precedence to the fa- 
voured culture-god. The ages, as finally arranged, were 
first, that of Tezcatlipoca (as sun), which ends with the 
destruction of giants and men through jaguars ; second, that 
of Quetzal-coatl, when men became monkeys and a hurri- 
cane ended all; third, that of Tlaloc, when men were de- 
stroyed by a rain of fire; fourth, that of Chalchiutlicue, 
when the deluge came and men became fishes ; and fifth, the 
present age, which will end with an earthquake. 

i Eight years seems a long interval for this ceremon5^ It is 
probably astronomical. Compare the Charila (Delphi) eight-year 
fertility or earth-mother festival, and the paper by W. S. Fox, 
Am. Philolog. Assoc, 1916, p. xviii. Joyce, Mexican Archaeology, 
London, 1914, p. 74, has compared the Pueblo rite. 

2 These are not " Lares and Penates," as Reville explained them. 



I02 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

The Aztecs, like their northern relatives, held the sun as 
a god, and this god they found revered also by the agricul- 
tural peoples whom they conquered, though the latter also 
worshipped earth-goddesses. The Aztecs then adopted the 
goddesses, as wives of their gods, and made the gods forms 
of their sun-god, who measured their year, and by whom, 
and earth, was taken the primitive Mexican oath (touching 
and eating earth as one swore). The general signs of the 
sun-god are quetzal-feathers, disc, yellow, and east; he 
was the god, teotl. As in Chibcha belief, his lady was the 
moon ; he is sometimes represented as " son of Quetzal- 
coatl." For him, when born, all other gods sacrificed them- 
selves, in order to feed him. Hence now men are sacrificed 
to feed him, not in his own but only in other forms. It is 
remarkable that Tonatiuh, the sun per se, is thus without a 
temple and sacrifice, though prayers are oflfered to him 
four times a day and night. He is identified with the Aztec 
gods, who absorb all the sacrifice of the sun. 

But older than these sun-forms are the primitive Xiute- 
cutli, called Ue-ue, the " old, old " god of Fire, portrayed 
as black-green-yellow and having a golden mirror, who was 
revered in the domestic cult of the Tarascans and by the 
Nahuan Tepanec in the form of a papalotl (butterfly), or 
as a man with a snake. He received a daily libation and 
offerings and a yearly sacrifice. At the end of every year, 
and again at the close of the fifty-two year cycle, a fresh 
fire was kindled, on the bare breast of a prisoner, " to make 
the sun rise." As a male god, Fire dwells in water (like 
Agni), but as a female this god received human victims, who 
were first half burned and, before death, were pulled out of 
the fire, that their still beating hearts might be extracted 
for sacrifice; locks of their hair being preserved as talis- 
mans. Besides these human victims. Fire was also revered, 
in the last month of the year, with animals burned alive. 

To these pre-Aztec deities must be added the culture-god 
Quetzal-coatl, the feathered-serpent, who represents pre- 
Aztec or Toltec civilization. Though the teacher of arts, 



RELIGION OF MEXICO IO3 

as of agriculture, for he found the corn afterwards stolen by 
Tlaloc, he was outwitted and driven out by the Aztec god. 
But his Messianic return from the East was long looked for, 
till the Spaniard appeared as his reincarnation. Coiled up 
as a serpent he sleeps, as represented in stone, till he wakes 
to bring a new era ; or, as a man with a bird's head and ex- 
tended tongue, he is identified with the Wind, Ehecatl, or 
Whisperer, Tohil, or breeze from the east, which brings 
spring. He is averse to human sacrifice, except as his priests 
draw for him their own blood. His temple is not a pyra- 
mid but roofed and domed, with a simulated serpent's 
mouth as entrance. His priests wear white and teach the 
arts, a race apart from the black-robed Aztec priests. His 
image is kept covered, like a medicine-bundle. As wind 
lulling to sleep, he is also invoked by thieves ! 

The Aztecs of course gave precedence to their own great 
gods. Out of the pantheon of two or three hundred gods, 
there were some fifteen in human form and seven or eight in 
animal form who were chief; of these, two were pre-emi- 
nent, namely Uitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca, the monstrous 
'' brother " gods of the great ziggurat of the City of Mexico. 
The former was the Humming-bird, called also '' hair 
of the Sun," for he was mysteriously born of the Sun 
and of Coatlicue, the vegetation-goddess as earth-serpent, 
whose other sons are both the " unnumbered stars " and 
the pre-Aztec hunting-god and cloud-serpent, Mixcoatl. 
With Coatlicue, after slaying her unfilial sons, the Hum- 
ming-bird at last ascended to heaven. He was, as Mextli, 
also the warrior-god of the Aztecs. His small image was 
borne before fighters by his black-robed priests,^ whose hair 
was never shorn and who were ordained to his service by be- 
ing smeared with a child's blood. The servants of this god 
were the chief priests of the Aztecs and his service as war- 

1 So in Peru, the Chancas carried into battle the image of their 
founder, Uscovilca, and in Colombia the Chibchas carried mummies 
of famous warriors, to inspire courage and bring victory. Com- 
pare the use of the tabernacle in battle. 



104 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

and-sun-god demanded an unceasing flow of human blood. 
His festivals, in May, August, and December, commemorate 
him as the god of the spring and summer ; he had a flower- 
feast in August without victims. At his December feast, 
his image in dough was eaten in communion by his wor- 
shippers, after many victims had been slain. 

Tezcatlipoca was the god of the smoking mirror. He has 
been interpreted as the winter-sun who drives away vege- 
tation; at all events, a cold and gloomy god, black and red 
in colour, who gives hard laws and punishes offenders with 
disease and death ; a god who, like the Vedic Varuna, spies 
on man. He wanders through the city by night, needing 
seats placed there for him. He is identified with Mixcoatl 
as inventor of fire and is connected with Tlazol-teotl as a 
god of sin and confession. He also appears as the sun and 
has a sacrifice in order to the reviving of the sun. It must 
be as sun and not as law-giver that he is ever young and 
the god of banquets. His colours and his mirror make him 
appear as a special form of Fire (above). His image also 
has serpent associations, though not fundamental, for he has 
a face " like a bear." He is the embodiment of law and 
harsh justice, nor is it quite obvious that, as Reville thinks, 
he represents any natural phenomenon. His statue has a 
gold ear into which pour smoke-clouds of sacrifice repre- 
senting prayers. 

Another famous god is the " flayed " Xipe, yellow like 
Centeotl (above) as maize-god, but because of his colour 
turned into the goldsmiths' god, to whom were offered flayed 
captives as victims, their skins being carried a month by 
the captors. He is also a war-and-fertility god.^ The 
planet Venus was a war-deity in the west. Travellers and 
merchants had as god of their class Yucatecutli, to whom, 
represented by their staves, the merchants prayed for suc- 
cess. 

1 In March there were gladiatorial fights in honour of Xipe, the 
captive victims' hearts being torn out ; sometimes they were shot 
to death. The heart and blood were fertility-charms. 



RELIGION OF MEXICO I05 

Besides such gods, the Aztecs worshipped creator-gods 
of the eighth heaven, who, Hke Brahman, were rationahzed 
beings, not supposed to be active, and hence were not much 
worshipped, and with whom the national god, Uitzilopochtli, 
was eventually identified ; or they served as medicinal gods, 
who sent and cured diseases, like Apollo ; though there was 
a special " healer " god. Also female demons, like the 
Hindu Mothers around Shiva, were generally supposed to 
send children's diseases. Such demons were usually the 
souls of women who had died in childbirth ; they served the 
war-god and, since war-gods are associated with lightning, 
they appeared as lightning-flashes. 

The death-god, Mictlan-tecutl, like the Hindu Yama, was 
placed underground (but in the north), where he and his 
spouse devour those who die of old age and disease; the 
lords of this place being fiends who torment earth. The 
passage to it is across deserts, through crashing hills, winds 
that cut like knives, and it lies beyond four (sometimes 
nine) streams, coloured yellow, red, blue, and white. 
Tlaloc (above) has an eastern paradise, though he is in the 
south, and this (Tulan East) is at the source of four rivers. 
As already explained, warriors and those who die of water- 
diseases (dropsy, etc.) or lightning go'' to him. Warriors 
go also to the Sun-heaven, descending afterwards to earth 
as humming-birds. The soul or " shadow-breath " going to 
Mictlan is escorted by a red dog ; in Peru by a black dog. 
At death the dead man is clothed in the robes of his god 
and is guarded by paper amulets, as in Egypt. Some souls 
go to Tulan West, where the sun goes down, as in North 
America. There are thus various places for the dead ; but, 
except for the fact that disease brings its own fate and 
bravery a better, there is no ethical content in the conception 
of the hereafter. The gods were not regarded as immortal.^ 

^The Aztecs, like the Hindus, had an annual (September) "re- 
turn of the gods," indicated by a foot-print on maize, when a 
drunken orgy ensued called " washing the gods' feet." and slaves 
were burned alive. But it was always a question whether the gods 
would live longer than the Cycle. 



I06 . THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

The religious shambles called a church was presided over 
by an organization of priests, monks, and nuns, who lived 
in convents. The priests made sacrifice, but also taught 
school. Baptism, absolution on confession, and communion 
by eating the god's image of dough, or, by proxy, the vic- 
tim, were practised. The cross was the Four-fold Tree of 
Life. The teocalli were pyramidal, ascended by outside 
steps, five to nine stories high, surmounted by altars. That 
in Mexico City was eighty feet high ; on its altars burned sac- 
rificial fires almost perennial. In the city were six hundred 
altars. Thousands of priests devoted themselves to secur- 
ing victims. They taxed the community for their services 
as diviners (by means of snakes, arrows, seeds, water, etc.) 
and as butchers of men. Tarascan had its hereditary priests 
and two high priests served Centeotl among the Totonac. 
The Zapotec high priest was so charged with spiritual power 
as to be dangerous to touch and he was kept secluded, to 
commune with the sun and give out prophecies. The Aztec 
priest sometimes served as a soldier and originally the mili- 
tary and religious chiefs were one. But the priest also 
appeared as a scholar, an ascetic, under rigid discipline, a 
teacher of youth, inventor of a calendar,^ often a celibate. 
The idea of a Supreme God, lacking among the Aztecs, 
occurred to a Nahuan, king of Tezcuco, who died in 1472. 
In his grief he cried, it is said, " There must be some god to 
console me " ; but not finding one he invented the '' Un- 
known god," to whom, as " cause of causes," he built a 
nine-story temple representing the ninth heaven of his Un- 
known, to whom he " sacrificed " only incense and flowers. 
Perhaps this tale is true. A philosophic interpretation of 
divinity may well be granted to the inheritors of Toltec cul- 
ture. But anyway this reformation no more replaced the 
old gods than did the earlier Egyptian reform. It may not 

^The Aztec calendar was ruder than that of the Mayas, but it 
counted 365 days of the year, of which the last five were un- 
hicky and ominous. Boys in college, girls in convents,^ were 
taught tiH the age of fifteen. Some of these priests were vege- 
tarian monks, Quaquacuiltin. 



RELIGION OF MEXICO I07 

have been intended to oust them. Bloody sacrifice and life- 
communion with gods never ceased. Even the gentle 
Quetzalcoatl, who was opposed to human sacrifice, had his 
priests offer him their own blood. The resulting idea of the 
cult remained : the gods need human blood. 

The basis of this Mexican religion coincides in many par- 
ticulars with that of the northern savage. Thus the Four 
Directions or Winds of the North are still preserved in the 
serpent-cross.^ In Mexico, as in Peru, the intoxicating 
plant, like Soma, has become divine and intoxication to be 
moral must be religious. The wizard of the North and 
rarer priest had become a priest indeed in Mexico, but not 
yet with an hereditary priesthood, as in Colombia, where the 
priests evolved a caste-system, like that in India. The 
tabooed Zapotec high-priest (above), became, among these 
Chibchas, a secret ruler, secluded as a Lama. All the other 
priests formed a caste, who acted as Shamans, judges, and 
executioners. A second caste was that of warriors ; a third, 
that of traders, agriculturists, and craftsmen; the fourth 
being tributary nomads. Perhaps the greatest advance 
among the Aztecs is in the prayer- formula. This prayer at 
the inauguration of an Aztec king is cited : ^' O god, may 
this king use the wisdom thou hast given him, not for his 
own good, but for the good of his people, and do thou keep 
him from oppressing us." Another Aztec prayer runs: 
" May thy chastisement, O god, be that of a father or 
mother; not from anger, but to the end that we may be 
freed from folly and vice." One never knows, however, 
how much the European renderers of these prayers are 
drawing on real material.^ 

1 In Yucatan the Roman Church has converted the Four into 
church-spirits, dominating wind and weather. The red god of the 
East is St. Dominic ; the white god of the North is St. Gabriel ; the 
black god of the West is St. James; and the yellow god of the 
South is Mary Magdalene. In cross-form the four are united in 
the Svastika Tree of Life, or Weal, to whom a bird, called a cock, 
was offered, as in Greece to the healer Aesculapius. 

2 Compare Garcilasso's Peruvian prayer : " O thou who hast 
existed for ever and shalt exist for ever, who hast by thy fiat ere- 



I08 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

The religions of South America include the lowest ani- 
mism and the high worship of a Cause of causes, as man 
passes from the savagery of cannibal tribes living in tree- 
tops to the culture of Peruvian Amautas, '' professors," and 
inventors of the mnemonic qiiipu, dramatists, architects, and 
statesmen. On the whole, civilization is here confined to 
narrow limits rather closely connected geographically and in 
touch with the western coast, where legend says that there 
was immigration from abroad. Similarity of artistic work 
and other indications may support the legend that the west- 
ern littoral received its first culture from early northern 
sources.^ The religious type of the higher culture resem- 
bles that of the Mayas rather than that of the Nahuans, as 
the people are agricultural and pastoral rather than no- 
madic. But it may be an independent civilization alto- 
gether, as it was certainly higher. The Mexicans never 
conceived the state founded by the Incas. Aztec political 
power was that of a central tribe extracting forced tribute 
from outsiders, not that of a great state civilizing its neigh- 
bours. 

Most real to the South American is nature-worship, not 
in an exalted sense but in the sense that his fears or hopes 
are attached to natural phenomena by a belief in their will 
to work him ill or good. The Yurupari noise-demon, heard 
in the forest and deprecated, is an example. The Brazilian 
Tupan, whom the missionaries called their '* God," is an- 
other ; he is merely the lightning-spirit. To the Patagonian, 
stars are spirits; to the Araucanians, they are ancestors. 
In Brazil, the Botocudos keep away evil spirits with fire and 
shoot the storm- (or eclipse-) demon with arrows. They 

ated man, be thou in sky or earth or cloud or depth, our saviour, 
grant us life everlasting." Garcilasso was intent on showing the 
Peruvians at their best and one cannot avoid thinking that he per- 
haps bettered that best. But he may have been scrupulously cor- 
rect Peruvian culture was certainly extraordinary. 

1 Joyce cites the use of turquoise, obtainable only from New 
Mexico. See T. A. Joyce, South American Archaeology, London, 
1912, pp. 188, 207. Yet this source was not necessary, since tur- 
quoise is found in Chile. See Man, 1914, No. 21. 



RELIGION OF PERU lOQ 

believe that the moon sends them evil, but the sun sends 
good. Good and evil spirits are worshipped by the Arau- 
canians also, who too have a thunder-spirit, like the thun- 
der-people of the. North, and a volcano-spirit, as well as 
animal gods. 

A higher culture is found among the Colombians. The 
Quimbayans of this region are indeed very primitive, having 
neither a cult of animals or of plants, nor temples nor idols. 
But the Chibchas or Muiscans, of the same region, like the 
natives of northern Argentina, sacrificed children to the sun 
and rain-god and had religious masks, marked with tear- 
lines, like those of the savages of Jamaica, which suggests 
that "the fundamental ideas underlying the religions of a 
great part of South America and the early population of 
the Antilles were closely akin." ^ They had a cult of stones, 
lakes, trees, and perhaps of ancestors ; but their earliest gods, 
as greater spirits, were Sun and Thunder. A primitive 
recognition of a Creator has been asserted for them and 
for other South Americans; but it is not clear that this is 
another god than the tribal progenitor, who is often a beast 
or a material object (star or sun). The Chibchas recog- 
nize a culture-hero called Bochica, whose rules were so strict 
that a cult-heroine, Huitaca, who may be the Moon, taught 
in opposition a religion of joy and dancing, till the Creator, 
who rarely interferes in human affairs, turned her into an 
owl. But she was still potent enough to help the Bogota 
god Chibchachum to cause a deluge, till Bochica appeared 
on a rainbow (the Rainbow being otherwise the goddess of 
women) and opened a path for the waters with his golden 
rod. Then the Creator turned the Bogota god into the 
giant who supports earth, and whose uneasy movements 
cause earthquakes. The inhabitants of Colombia and of 
Ecuador also worship stones and snakes ; the snake as light- 
ning appears here as in the North. The Chibchas had a 
god of agriculture, whose idol was wrought gold, a god of 

1 Joyce, op. cit., p. 189. 



no THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

boundaries, and one of trade, who together with Sun, Moon, 
Mountain, and Lake, received sacrifice. Jewels, men, in- 
cense, and fire were offered to the Sun, but chiefly children, 
as in Mexico. Mexican also was their shooting-sacrifice, 
but here of slaves or of talking parrots, the victims repre- 
senting the god, so that his blood fertilized the land. Idols 
and fetishes were used and pilgrimages to the sacred lake 
caused enmity between tribes to cease, while intoxication 
en route was regarded as a religious rite. So in Ecuador 
we find a worship of Sun and Moon as chief gods, along 
with that of a war-god ; while serpent-worship is connected 
with both lake-cult and hero-cult. In general, cultural 
phases were religiously represented. The mass worshipped 
whatever could reasonably be feared or revered, from stone 
to star. Inland, because most useful, the Sun was chief 
god; on the littoral, the Sea was the great god, with the 
Moon to share his honours. " Sun-worship probably was 
not practised on the coast before the Inca conquest." ^ Hu- 
man sacrifice was universal till the Incas stopped it. On the 
coast the victims were flayed, as in Mexico. 

The priests of the savage tribes were generally men, but 
in Patagonia generally women. At the worst they were 
Shamans exorcising disease by noise, as in the extreme south. 
The higher sort divined (by twitching of fingers, dreams, 
cries, etc.) and interceded with gods by fasting on hill-tops 
and making offerings to the Sun of hair,^ etc. Some priests 
were not allowed to touch earth or be seen, so dangerous 
was their mystic power.^ Among Chibchas, women had 
great influence (they might even beat their husbands), which 
may account for their cult-heroine. In northern Colom- 
bia, Antioquia, there was also a similar cult-heroine, Dabe- 
ciba. A combination of agriculture, women, and snakes has 

1 Joyce, op. cit. p. 66. 

2 Here again the hair is connected with the sun. Like the Aztec 
priests the Incas wore their hair long (this was their prerogative). 

3 Compare the Zapotec priest mentioned above and the Inca, who 
went out only in a litter, ostensibly because he was the incarnate 
sun who is carried through the sky. 



RELIGION OF PERU III 

been noticed among the Iroquois. The Chibcha chiefs were 
themselves divine and appointed the priests to the snake and 
water-cults. 

The sketch just given resolves half the mystery that used 
to surround the religion of the Incas of Peru, which was 
once regarded as unique, whereas it really rested upon sup- 
ports common to the religions of neighbouring provinces 
and got its strength not from novelty but because it was 
racial. Both to the north and to the west, on the coast, 
there were already temples, idols, established priesthoods, 
rituals, pilgrimages, and especially lake-worship and the cult 
of sun (or sea) and moon, as supreme powers. There was 
also an acknowledgment of Creator-gods superior to evil 
spirits, not to speak of that substratum of religion found all 
over the continent, belief in the mystic power of stones, trees, 
vegetables, snakes, animals, and fertilizing gods of rain, as 
well as that material culture best seen in Colombia and 
Ecuador, that is, inland and on the coast, where arts and 
trades flourished before the Incas came to Cuzco. 

As the Incas cannot be traced back of circa looo a. d. 
and as the Nahuans had overthrown and partly absorbed 
" Toltec " civilization four hundred years before that, and 
as the oldest civilization is on the coast, it is not improbable 
that Mayan immigration started the culture known as Inca, 
which it closely resembles.^ Even the solar origin of the 
Incas was not new. Tunja in Colombia was ruled by a king 
who was " son of the Sun " and married his sister, just like 
the Inca. The Inca derived from the Sun through the 
Mighty Man, Manco Capac, who suddenly emerged from 
the cave of Lake Titicaca with the golden bough planted 
later at Cuzco, and from his sister, the Moon, called Mama 
Ocllo as a human being, wife and sister of the Sun and 

1 The theocracy of the Incas merely intensifies traits found else- 
where. It was in fact an aristocracy. Only an Inca might be 
high-priest, be a polygamist, or even be educated (exceptions occur 
with permission of the Inca). Only Incas were exempt from 
capital punishment. Divine prestige came from the idea that the 
army was the army of the (Sun) Lord. Cf. Reville, op. cit., p. 124. 



112 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

patroness of the arts.^ Except (Venus) Chasca, who was 
a long-haired male page of the Sun, all the stars (planets) 
were servants of the Moon, while Rainbow was the servant 
of both gods. Earth and food-producing powers were es- 
pecially revered by the Peruvians.^ Maize was a divinity 
inland, fish on the littoral (one key to totemism). Maize 
was worshipped in the form of a figure made of the plant, 
as was coca, and adored as " Mother." The Earth-deity 
was propitiated with llama-idols containing food and was 
worshipped in caves. The people believed in the Sun-god 
before the Incas came, but also in Conopas and Huacas, 
material forms of vegetation-demons, divine animals, spirit- 
stones, etc., as in Mexico. Especially prominent in this cult 
is that of stones-, truncated pyramids by preference, repre- 
senting ancestors perhaps, but probably of wider bearing.^ 
Any stone, even if struck by accident, was placated with 
offerings. 

Dances were performed to the Sun-god at Rimac in June, 
when the dancers appeared to be " out of their senses." A 
girl was sacrificed and the " renewal of fire " performed. 
Apparently there is no trace of ghost-worship in this great- 
est event of the year. The dances were not ghost-dances. 
To this agricultural religion, mainly a cult of earth-powers 
and reproduction-rites, the invading Incas added the cult of 
themselves as sons of the Sun, at whose temple, as that of the 
greatest god, were performed sun-rites and others not solar. 
Thus in September there was an apotropaic rite, namely a 
public race in all directions ending with a washing-off of 
evils. Those not in the public race assisted by driving off 
evils with torches and dance, a night-rite, which yet took 
place at the Sun-temple. 

^The two are also interpreted as primeval male and cosmic egg. 

2 The serpent-cult is strongly marked. There is an underground 
snake-god of concealed treasure. The Inca emblem is two entwined 
snakes. Compare the serpent-mother of the Nahuans and the ser- 
pent-cults of North America. 

3 The Conopas were fetishes called " brothers," images of animals 
and plants as personal guardians but also used as fertility-charms, 
especially in llama form. 



RELIGION OF PERU II3 

To conciliate religious parties, the Incas accepted the most 
popular previous forms of tribal cult, the Collas' lake-cult 
and the Quichua sea-cult on the littoral. Lake Titicaca in 
Peru was as popular a divinity as Lake Guatabita in Co- 
lombia, v^here a political centre resulted from religious pil- 
grimages to the lake. In Peru there was a local lake 
or water divinity ("be thou male or be thou female," says 
an old hymn) called Viracocha, probably the greatest god 
before the Incas came to Cuzco. With her — or him — 
was identified a local western god Iraya, who, like a North 
American culture-hero, went disguised as an animal. Simi- 
larly, on the coast, at Rimac (Lima) and Pachacamac, there 
was the sea-god of fishes, and he too was adopted by the 
Incas as soon as their power reached the sea, though even 
at Pachacamac the Incas built a sun-temple above the town, 
to show that the Sun surpassed the Sea (a legend tells of 
the earlier enmity). Each to his own people these gods 
were the best ; the synthesis was partly political, partly in- 
evitable. It resulted in the god being no longer a mere fish- 
god, a mere lake-god, a mere sun-god, but a god represent- 
ing lake, sea, and sun, called Viracocha (of the lake), 
Pachacamac (of the sea), and the Sun (of the Incas), but 
often called by two or all of these names, Viracocha Pacha- 
camac.^ The Lady of the Lake was of course the wife of 
Viracocha (probably his own original form, cocha as lake). 
Her temple is now a chapel of the Virgin Mary.^ 

It is tradition that the Inca Yupanqui, in 1440, A. D., rea- 
soned out God as a necessarily Supreme Being, who dis- 
patched the sun on his path, daily " sent hke a servant," 

lAs Pacha-mama is earth-mother so Pacha-camac is earth-mover 
or shaker (ocean), not "all-mover as soul of all," as Joyce thinks. 

2 Hymns to iracocha are given by Brinton, Myths of the New 
World, Philadelphia, 1896, p. 155, and Markham, Incas of Peru, 
London, 191 1, p. 199. Reville, op. cit., p. 186, correctly interpreted 
Viracocha as water-god in 1884. It may be he who " shatters the 
water-jar" of the sky. Later writers have seen both in him and in 
Pacha-camac original Creators. An euhemeristic legend represents 
litholatry as superseded by the cults of water and sun in turn. It 
has a basis of truth. 



114 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

or, as if without will, " shot like an arrow." No Inca in 
his senses would have promulgated such political folly, 
for the Inca power rested entirely on the belief that Incas 
were vice-gerents of the highest god, the Sun. It may have 
been philosophically discussed whether the sun-god was 
under the orders of another god who was to be " worshipped 
only with the mind " ; certainly no effort was made to extend 
the worship any further. It sufficed to make the sun's disc 
representative of Sun as Light, Inti, and to see in this 
Sun-Light the Supreme, or the representative thereof. His 
temple and even the whole village faced east. His divine 
spouses were vestal virgins, practically spouses of the Inca. 
All the great feasts were in his honour, though his sister- 
wife. Mama Quilla, the Moon (in human form known as 
OcUo) was also revered, as goddess of weaving and spin- 
ning, and minor festivals were permitted in honour of her 
and of minor deities, such as the Planets, Pleiades, and 
Rainbow, who had their special chapels and cults. The 
Rainbow (god) was feared because he made dumb those 
who watched him. 

As descended from the Sun, Fire was greatly revered in 
the mirror-form, but also in rock-form and volcano-form. 
The Huacas (above) may have received additional rever- 
ence from the fact that the natural earth-home of the Fire- 
god was in stone. At the ritual " renewal of fire," it was 
brought out of the (flint) stone or conducted from heaven 
by means of a mirror, both forms being identified. There 
was also the feeling that oracles spoke from rocks and 
caverns. Rimac itself means the Murmuring (Voice), of 
rock or earth. 

But the Peruvians had still another great god, not local- 
ized, as were Viracocha and Pachacamac, but not, as were 
they, raised to universality by combination with the Sun- 
god. This was the many-named god of the club, stone, and 
sling, the thunder and lightning god called Illapa (Inti- 
allapa), whom the Incas made subordinate to the Sun, while 
they permitted him to retain his ancient festival. As of the 



RELIGION OF PERU 115 

Mexican Tlaloc, his abode was on the mountains, and his 
thunder-stones were everywhere revered as potent fer- 
tihty- and love-charms. As personified Lightning, he was 
son of the first divine man and born a twin; where- 
fore all twins were sacred, that is, sacrificed, to him. Un- 
holy (taboo) became the place that Lightning struck; men 
struck by him went underground ; but all Incas went to the 
Sun. Ordinary men, if worthy, might also go tO' the Sun ; 
but otherwise, like those struck by lightning, they went to 
Shadow-land, Supay, literally the Shade, to whom as a 
god children in some»districts were sacrificed. Their course 
thither was conducted by a black dog and led over a bridge 
of a hair. Diseased persons had a special abode after death 
(a belief of Mexican and Huron also) ; but there was no 
place of punishment. The dead were buried in caves or 
under towers; expecting resurrection, according to Gar- 
cilasso de la Vega. A sort of embalming or mummifica- 
tion was practised by the Peruvians and mummies were 
placed in their temples, carried in their processions, and 
taken as fetishes into battle.^ 

In the legalized Inca cult, the minor gods had smaller 
temples around the Sun-temple, the House of Gold at Cuzco. 
The high priest was the brother of the reigning Inca ; other 
priests were either Incas or local priests of special gods 
who at the same time acted as subordinate Sun-priests, like 
Levites. As among the Chibchas, the priesthood was he- 
reditary in the female line. Especial priests examined ani- 
mal entrails (haruspices) or divined by flights of birds 
(augures), maize-heaps, spiders' legs, water, and *' odd 
and even" tests. As the Incas expressly forbade human 

1 Mummification, sun-worship, brother-and-sister marriage, and 
megalithic temples are the chief items emphasized by those who 
derive Peruvian culture and religion from Egypt. The combination 
is a strong one. Yet, as we have seen, megalithic buildings are 
found elsewhere; sun-worship is found everywhere (so to speak); 
incest is not local ; and mummification in Peru, as in Egypt, was 
rendered possible by the extreme dryness of the atmosphere. Adhuc 
sub judice lis est. Another practice of the Peruvian was tattooing; 
but it is not necessary to derive it from the Pacific. 



Il6 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

sacrifice, it is clear that it was a previous Peruvian prac- 
tice. The usual '^ sacrifices " were vegetables, fruits, coca, 
and chicha, an intoxicant, which are offerings used elsewhere 
in South America. On the coast, headless skeletons (of 
women) show that the locally prevalent worship of Sea and 
of Moon was probably not without its human toll. In Co- 
lombia, the Quimbayans sacrificed prisoners of war, as was 
done in Antioquia. The Chibchas regularly set their tem^- 
ple-posts on the bodies of sacrificed slaves. This savagery 
was reduced at Cuzco to the sacrifice of a llama, a dog, a 
rabbit, or some other animal, offered to the Sun as a burnt 
offering or eaten raw by the worshippers. Almost the only 
human sacrifice occurred when the Inca fell ill and his son 
was sacrificed to save the father's life, or when children 
were sacrificed to give him a successful reign, or, in out- 
lying places, to make an offering to Supay. This was as 
nothing in comparison with the slaughterings in other parts 
of South America and Mexico, and on the whole it must be 
granted that the Incas went far in mollifying religion.^ 

But what the Peruvians lacked in cruelty they made up 
for in debauchery, especially in drinking and its attendant 
vices. A religious festival or pilgrimage always ended in 
a drinking-bout lasting for days. Thus the harvest festival 
closed with a drunken orgy. The festivals, however, also 
show appreciation of asceticism. The most interesting of 
these is the summer-solstice (December) festival, when the 
young men to be initiated into the tribe were flogged, dances 
and races followed, and men dressed as animals opposed 
women in a rope-dance with a four-coloured rope (black, 
white, red, and yellow). This ceremony concluded with the 
piercing of the ears of the youths, prayer (ejaculations), and 

1 Voluntary suttee was permitted to wives, especially to those of 
the Incas : but sometimes images were substituted for the real vic- 
tims. The vestal virgins of the Sun were actually virgins only 
till their marriage with the Sun represented by the Inca; but if 
untrue to their vows, they were buried alive, like Roman vestals. 
If worthy, they received civic and religious honours, especial escort, 
etc. There were 3000 of these " Elect of the Sun " at Cuzco alone. 



RELIGION OF PERU 117 

sacrifice. The winter-solstice festival (in June) was de- 
voted to adoration of the Sun, preceded by fasting and fol- 
lowed by a Saturnalia of debauchery. One has but to com- 
pare Colombian custom to see that all these popular festi- 
vals were racial rather than national. Thus at Tunja there 
was a year-end festival in which twelve men, representing 
months, in red, sang a death-song around a man in blue 
(black). In the Bogota harvest festival, men dressed in 
animal skins had a sun-celebration with prayer and the use 
of masks. The elements of all celebrations were races, 
games, intoxication, and licentious carousing. Savagery as 
cruelty appears chiefly in agricultural (fertility) rites, as 
when in Ecuador human sacrifice took place at the annual 
sowing, and then it is obviously a logical piece of sympa- 
thetic magic. There is scarcely any recognition of spirits 
naturally evil. The northern Tamahi of Antioquia in Co- 
lombia had an evil deity, Canicuba, besides a good deity 
as creator, Abina, but neither was worshipped. These peo- 
ple were chiefly agriculturists and developed great advance 
in weaving and dyeing, feminine influence prevailing. 

An interesting question arises in regard to the identifica- 
tion of man and god in these southern tribes. Bochica of 
the Chibchas was a jcult-man who, like Quetzalcoatl, finally 
disappears, here " to the east," and then is worshipped as a 
god ; his footstep is still visible on a rock. His laws were 
codified by the earliest historical chief, Nompanem of 
Irica; his sister, who ruled next, was followed by a chief 
called Idacansas, who had power over diseases and the ele- 
ments and thus started a cult marked by pilgrimages which 
practically made him a god, or, at least, a divine priest. 
Here we have not a priest as chief but a chief as priest. 
At Tunja also, two chiefs became Sun and Moon and were 
duly celebrated. Another chief here had a tail and four 
ears and had from the sun the power to metamorphose 
animals and men, virtually a divinity of a sort. Probably 
the Inca chief also did not assume political command as 
priest, but as chief, and then, as Sun's son, assumed priest- 



Il8 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

hood. This is certainly the case in the North, where no 
priest qua priest becomes a sachem.^ 

The ethical content of American religions is distinctly 
higher than that of the religions hitherto examined. Clan- 
morality is everywhere strict and often involves other clans. 
That is, truth between tribes, as in treaties, was observed, 
though of course it was usually a virtue to deceive, despoil 
and murder others. A certain connexion between ethics 
and spirits is observable in the implicit assumption that the 
tutelary spirits are present when conferences take place; 
but most of the tutelary spirits and culture-creatures are 
themselves famous for their knavery. In Mexico the mir- 
ror-god sees the sinner ; but there is no close connexion be- 
tween god and good. Baptism or ablution is to get rid of 
ills rather than of sin. The fast is recognized as a means 
of " purity " of the same sort. Before a Peruvian pilgrim 
might enter the god's temple at Pachacamac he had to fast 
for twenty days ; but this was to make certain, by a sort of 
quarantine, that he did not pollute the temple with bad in- 
fluence. The Incas had a system of " confession," but it 
was not religious. The inquisitors were church-police in 
the service of the system, which utterly destroyed individ- 
uality and private initiative. They decided whether each 
individual who came up for confession had withheld any- 
thing the church-and-state ought to know. The hereafter 
was not morally conditioned ; there was no ethical balance to 
be struck beyond the grave ; though there was doubtless the 
feeling in Peru, Mexico, and Bogota that the highest gods 
were morally higher than the demons who plagued men 
from below earth. But it is noteworthy that the hymns to 
the Sun and to Viracocha express only the worshipper's awe 
without any ethical implication. Communion with the god, 
by eating him, or his image, or his victim, or, as in Peru, 

1 The general derivation of kingly power from priestly power 
seems to rest on a misapprehension. Every king, as pater familias, 
is, like a father, at once head of earthly and heavenly affairs for 
his family; but he does not become father by being priest. 



RELIGION OF PERU IIQ 

by snaring a drink with him, had the purpose of physically 
strengthening the communicant, that is, it was religious with- 
out being moral. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

W. H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico^ Philadel- 
phia, 1846, and History of the Conquest of Peru, Phila- 
delphia, 1846-71. 

A. Reville, Religions of Mexico and Peru, Hibbert Lectures for 
1884. 

Sir C. R. Markham, A History of Peru, Chicago, 1892; Gar- 
cilasso de la Vega, in Commentaries on the Yncas, trans- 
lated, London, 1869-71; The Incas of Peru, London, 1911. 

T. A. Joyce, Mexican Archaeology, London, 1914; South 
American Archaeology, London, 1912. 

R. B. Brehm, Das Inkareich, Jena, 1885. 

D. G. Brinton, American Hero Myths, Philadelphia, 1882. 

S. G. Morley, Bulletin 57, 191 5, of Bureau of American Eth- 
nology. 



CHAPTER EIGHT 

RELIGION OF THE CELTS 

In the last chapter we passed far beyond the confines of 
Savage Religions and reached a plane even higher than that 
upon which we are now to enter, the religions of certain 
barbarians, midway between savagery and civilization, 
namely, the inhabitants of northern Europe, from the time 
of the Christian era to that of the Middle Ages, almost 
synchronous with the more advanced types of South Amer- 
ica. Although these barbarians are linguistically connected 
with the higher Mediterranean group represented by Greeks 
and Romans, they are religiously distinct, since from the 
earliest historical period the inhabitants of Greece and Italy 
had been profoundly affected by the far older cultures of 
the Mediterranean littoral and of Mesopotamia. It will be 
necessary therefore to ignore whatever Aryan unity may 
once have bound together Greek-Roman and German-Celt 
and treat separately the two divisions of northern and south- 
ern Europe. 

To the northern division Celtic religion serves as the best 
introduction, because much of what the Celt believed was 
once the general belief of Europe. When the Aryan-speak- 
ing peoples spread from eastern Europe southward and 
westward, they took as their own the land and religion of 
the prehistoric natives, giving them in exchange a new lan- 
guage and a new culture, partly that belonging by inheritance 
to themselves, partly that which they had absorbed from 
Scythia and elsewhere, on their long migration. Thus the 
mixed inhabitants of future Gaul, France, Spain, Northern 
Italy, and Great Britain had thereafter a religion combined 
of indigenous and imported elements. In the course of two 

I20 



CELTIC RELIGION 121 

thousand years of westward progression the Aryan factor 
must have become a thin stream irrigating the vast field 
into which it emptied (much as the Aryan element thinned 
out as it flowed into India), a field which had its own reli- 
gious springs, indicated by the survival of monuments still 
marking their former activity, the trepanned skull, the exit- 
hole in the cromlech (from which graves the soul might 
crawl), the toys and implements found in graves, menhirs, 
and perhaps the pictured magic of immemorial caves. 

Such vague indications of religious belief reach far back 
of the entry of the Celts into western Europe. Perhaps 
about 2000 B. c, the Celts, an offshoot of the eastern Aryan- 
speaking tribes, between the Carpathians and the Steppe, 
then located about the Danube, began to migrate further 
west and south. One branch invaded Asia Minor and 
Greece. Another streamed south-west through the Tyrol 
and settled in Italy.^ A third spread over Gaul about 800 
B. c, Spain about 500 b. c, and at the same time, extending 
northward, invaded Britain, first about 500 B. c, and then 
again about 300 b. c. Of these two northward streams, the 
first became the Gaelic (Goidelic) or Irish Celts; the sec- 
ond, the Cymrics, Britains, and Belgians.^ These two sub- 
divisions stood to each other linguistically as the Romans 
stood to the Oscans, Volsci, and Umbrians, the Gaelic divi- 
sion pronouncing a q where the British-Belgian said p, and 
u where the latter said ti. The older pronunciation is that 
of Roman and Gaelic (compare Ionian k with Attic p), 
as contrasted with that of Volsci and British. In fact, the 
Volsci and Welsh (compare the Volcae tribe of Southern 
Gaul) may once have been " Hawks," as the name perhaps 
means, of the same stock with the same name. 

In modem terms, the Irish preceded the British by sev- 

1 Probably from this Celtic stock came Vergil, Catullus, Livy, 
and other " Romans," whose famihes originated in the province of 
northern Italy. Vergil's spirit is more Celtic than Roman. 

2 Tacitus distinguishes the red-headed northern Caledonians, who 
were like Germans, from the swarthy Spanish-like Welsh and the 
Southerners, who resembled Gauls and Belgians {Agricola, c. xi; 



122 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

eral centuries and were pushed west by the later wave of 
immigration, which had perhaps come more directly from 
the Rhine and other eastern parts of Celt-land. The longer 
acclimatization of the Gaelic Celts would have resulted in a 
closer contact with the primitive European stock and may 
account for some of their religious characteristics. The 
later British, represented now by Welsh and Cornish, en- 
tered Britain about the time iron was introduced there, circa 
300 B. c, a thousand years after England's Bronze Age be- 
gan. By this time the Celts of Gaul had already come into 
contact with the civilization lying south (south-east) of 
them through commercial routes which had been followed 
for centuries. In fact, remains in Ireland show, as early 
as the Bronze Age, influences which have been described 
as " ^Egean, Scandinavian, and Iberian." ^ Such contact, 
at least that of later days, tended to civilize them but also 
to undermine their native virtue and religious belief. By 
the time Caesar came directly in touch with them, the most 
popular god of the Gauls was no longer a warrior's god but 
the god of arts and journeys (" A/[ercury," thus defined). 
Incidentally Caesar informs us that the Gauls were very re- 
ligious and believed that all things happened by divine will. 
He tells us, too, more specifically that they worshipped heal- 
ing gods like Apollo and three great gods, whom he identi- 
fies with A^Iars, Jupiter, and Minerva ; also, that they derived 
their origin from Dis Pater. 

Modern scholarship has been inclined to ignore the im- 
portance of such statements in favour of the a priori view 
that all higher gods are secondary creations. To get to the 
bed-rock of Celtic religion we must remove the upper layers. 
This assumes what is upper. Historically the great gods 
are as old as any we know in possession of the Celts. If 
they agree rather well with phenomena common to other 

compare Caesar, B. G. v. 12). The Gauls were of the same linguistic 
stock as the British, sermo hand multuin diversus; but had become 
lazy and were less war-like, segnitia cum otio. 
^ See The Bronze Age in Ireland, by G. Coffey, London, 1913. 



CELTIC RELIGION I23 

branches of the same stock, it is reasonable to conclude, not 
that high gods come before others, but that the Celts may 
have brought high gods with them. Little localized spirits 
stay behind when a people migrates ; when resettled, the same 
people picks up new ones off the ground where they grow. 

Of course, a Roman would be apt to make mistakes in 
describing outlandish gods. Some of the Celtic gods de- 
scribed as " Jupiters " have a disc, some a hammer or bolt. 
In identifying all these gods there is a good deal of uncer- 
tainty. Nor need we lay too much weight on etymological 
equations. Yet some of these, approved by recognized Celtic 
scholars, are, if certain, instructive as well as interesting. 

The father of Ossian (Ossain) was Finn,^ who in turn is 
son of Cumhal, Irish for (the god) Camulos, whose name 
lingers in Colchester (of old, Camulodunum), and the word 
camulos appears to mean sky, etymologically equal to Ger- 
man himmel. Euhemerized gods are a feature of Irish 
mythology and there is nothing strange anywhere in the re- 
duction of a god to an historical hero (the Persian epic is 
built upon such heroes). Thor and Donar again may ap- 
pear in Celtic Taranis or Taranacos, a thunder-god. But 
apart from the slippery ground of linguistics there is toler- 
able certainty that Belenos and Sulis represent sun-god and 
sun-goddess, respectively (Belenos of Gaul, worshipped by 
the Druids, becomes in the Morte D' Arthur a mere king). 
Then there is a Vintius, probably a Wind-god, though called 
Mars. Lucetius is a light-god, perhaps lightning. The 
Mars of the British called "war-brilliant" (Belatucadros) 
shows no sign of elevation from a low-down " spirit of fer- 
tility." What shall we say, too, of gods named " the all- 
wise," ''he of brilliant energy," "the enduring" (persist- 
ent), dubbed by the Romans Mars or Jupiter? The gods 
called " the highest " and " thunderer " are at least as old as 
any Celtic gods we know.^ 

iHe corresponds to a British fertility-god, Gwyn ab Ntidd, and 
the Welsh king of fairies. 
2 Ollovidios, " all-knowing," is called a Mars ; Ambisagros, " en- 



124 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

There is reason to believe that Celts and Romans con- 
sorted together, before becoming " Celts " and " Romans," 
for a long period. They have one or two grammatical forms 
not shared by other Aryans and indicating a closer connec- 
tion than that between Roman (Italic) and German or 
Slavic. Roman and Celt had much in common otherwise. 
Both were war-like, yet both from their earliest history were 
agricultural. Ambactonos was a very venerable Celtic god 
of farming. But there was no farmer-caste. When a Bel- 
gian warrior stopped fighting he returned to the plough. 
The Celts, too, as well as the Gauls, had been expert metal- 
workers for centuries before Caesar invaded Britain (in 
55 B.C.).'- Both worshipped trade-gods and smith-gods, 
sometimes under the form of fire-gods, who patronized arts 
and represented recondite wisdom. As sundry Celts de- 
rived through the mother (matrilinear), they naturally 
made much of goddesses and had Mother and Queen divini- 
ties, such as "Diana" (so named by Romans) and the 
" Ops " called Rosmerta, who represented nature-power and 
productivity, not as mere spirits but as high Powers. There 
is also a Mother of the Gods, Anu or Ana, perhaps equiva^ 
lent to the Gaelic Danu, Mother of Light-gods (below). 
How many Celtic gods were raised to godhead from man's 
estate we do not know. Some gods may once have been 

during," a Jupiter. lovanucaros, " lover of youth," is a god paired 
with Mercury, who is also " the wise," Visucios. The water-god 
Bedaios is also called a Jupiter. These various Jupiters, etc., are 
probably expressions of belief in a general sun-god and god of 
weather ramifying into sky, thunder, light, etc., embodied with a 
local clan-god and healing-god. They are chiefly of Gaul. The 
"all-wise" (etc.) gods are epithets individualized as separate 
persons. 

1 Britain became a Roman province in 43 a. d. It was aban- 
doned in 410 A. D.^ by which time trade-route culture, which had 
existed long before, had been largely reinforced by direct contact 
with the Romans, whose own religion had previously been Hel- 
lenized and Orientalized. Traces of Oriental-Roman cult remained 
in Britain long after the Romans withdrew. Even in Tacitus's time, 
the better British of the south of England dressed like Romans, 
spoke Latin, and were building forums and baths. 



CELTIC RELIGION 1 25 

human. One of the leaders of the Boii was " deified " after 
death. 

It is therefore impossible to see primitive Celtic only in 
the much later tales of giants, fairies, and magicians in 
Ireland and Britain, tales which, were they primitive, would 
still be of doubtful interpretation. If we seek as indicative 
of Celtic character the most wide-spread phenomena, they 
are the worship of a few great gods over a wide area,^ the 
employment of magic, the influence of the priesthood, and 
a general but localized belief in special terrestrial divinities, 
silvani, animals, rivers,^ springs, etc. In Gaul and lower 
Germany the cult of Mothers, generally a Mother in three 
forms, is prominent, which in the British Islands becomes 
a belief in fairies. Groups rather than individuals are often 
honoured, or feared, like the Dusii, evil spirits plaguing 
women, as elsewhere ghosts and storm-spirits are wont to 
be honoured en masse rather than by individual names. 
Honour was paid not usually in temples but in groves, 
nameton, although Celtic temples were not unknown on the 
Continent and idols were common in the case of individual 
gods, such as the three mentioned by Lucan as Teutates, 
Esus, and Taranis, who were individually worshipped with 
bloody sacrifices. Of these, Teutates is possibly a tribal 
god, whose name suggests, what is otherwise suspected, that 
Teutonic and Celtic elements combine in many " Celtic " 
phenomena. Taranis (above) is the Mars or Jupiter of 
thunder. Esus is the tribal god of the Essuvii (in France; 
" interpreted " as a solar or a vegetation-spirit) ; his name 
appears to be one with that of certain Irish divinities (Aes). 
A British culture-hero of local fame, Gwydion,^ though it 
is not certain that he is Woden, yet agrees remarkably well 

1 Such as Lug in England and France, Ogma in Ireland, Gaulic 
Ogrnius, and Epona (equa), the goddess of horses. 

2 Such as the Dee (Deva, goddess) ; Sequana (goddess of) the 
Seine; Belisama, "most warlike," goddess of the Mersey. The 
river itself was the local deity. 

3 Gwydion's Castle in the Milky Way (in the star-cult of the 
Welsh), which, however, is also "Lug's Chain." 



126 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

with the Germanic god in name and characteristics, as both 
were distinguished for war, poetry, magic, and the abihty 
to raise up men from vegetable growths. Mabon, of the 
Arthur legend, is one with Mapones, the *' great youth " 
form of that medicinal " Apollo " revered as a god of heal- 
ing springs under the name Borvo (Bourbon), the " boiler." 
Other such ApoUos are Moguns, whose name survives in 
Mainz (Moguntiacum), and Grannus, the Apollo of Aix-la- 
Chapelle, who is paired with '' long-lived " Sirona, an earth- 
goddess, as Silvanus is paired with Silvana, and Borvo with 
the probably animal-spirit Damona. 

The last named deity, like the Epona already mentioned, 
shows that animal-worship was wide-spread among the 
Celts, who wore skins and engraved images of the boar and 
serpent ; but the bearing of these facts is by no means cer- 
tain. They do not prove, as has been supposed, that the 
Celts were totemists, nor is this proved by the further fact, 
mentioned by Caesar, that the Celts did not eat the hen, 
goose, and hare, although they kept them as domestic ani- 
mals. The hare, for example, was used in Britain for divi- 
nation, which might have secured its inviolability as an 
article of food. The goose may have been sacred, as in In- 
dia, through evincing a heavenly nature by its lofty flight. 
Caesar does not mention as taboo the pig, which some Celts 
will not eat. This may have been divine either as a fight- 
ing-animal, the wild boar, or as a rooting animal sacred to 
under-world deities. Its love of acorns alone would make 
it perhaps sacred to the oak-tree revered by the Tree-priests 
(Druids). Many of the divine animals or deities of ani- 
mals are unexplained or even doubtful in meaning. Tarvos, 
the bull,^ and Moccus (the boar?) and even Mullo (the 

iThe Tarbfess was an Irish (Ulster) tauric festival or "bull- 
feast," in which a man ate of a slaughtered white ox and then, 
gorged, slept and dreamed, while four Druids repeated magical 
verses. The man the sleeper saw in his dream was then made king 
of Ireland, Windisch, Irische Texte, Leipzig, 1880, p. 200. , This 
shows a lingering divinity in the bull, as well as a lingering (magi- 
cian's) power in the Druid. 



CELTIC RELIGION 127 

ass?) are probably deities or sacred animals, the last per- 
haps as a war-animal, like March, the horse of war (com- 
pare Mars).^ Snakes were burned at the summer festival, 
but the horned serpent seems to be revered. Artio of Bern 
is either the local bear-goddess, like Artemis, or a culture- 
goddess (from ar, to plough, daringly supposed by some 
scholars to be related to King Ar-thur). The raven was 
sacred ; the crow was regarded as a prophetic, but not per- 
haps as a divine bird. Yet in this whole domain of animal- 
worship there still remains more dubiosity than certainty. 

Like the Romans and their neighbours, the Celts laid great 
weight on the flight of birds and course of animals for pur- 
poses of divination, and snakes were used for the same pur- 
pose. Further they observed celestial phenomena and em- 
ployed yew-rods to the same end ; but both the other priests 
or soothsayers, vates to the Roman, and the Druids ex- 
amined with special care the entrails of animals slain for 
this purpose and the nature of the blood. 

Such divination was but part of the priestly duties of the 
Druids, whose role as philosophers and prophets was, how- 
ever, probably much exaggerated by classical writers. 
Druidic " philosophy " consisted in magic and a belief in 
metempsychosis; they conducted the barbarously cruel sac- 
rifices of the gods of clan and war and agriculture, consist- 
ing in burning human victims in wicker cages. It was their 
duty also to save the " soul of the oak " by amputating its 
mistletoe with a golden knife in moonlight ; and distil from 
it a curative drink. 

The priests formed no caste but were chosen from the 
youths of the people and elected their own chief. In Ire- 
land they superintended the selection of a king. As prophets, 
they chewed acorns for inspiration and their sacred oak was 
a parallel to that of Dodona, whose leaves also gave oracles.^ 

iMoccus appears to mean boar (pig), but is called a Mercury 
by the Romans, as Mullo is called a Mars. 

2 A Gallic invasion may have taken place in Greece. In Asia 
Minor there were Gauls whose centre of worship was Dru-nemeton 
(Oak-grove). 



128 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

They acted as political representatives of the people and 
after Caesar's time adopted distinctions of rank of which 
he says nothing. It is questionable whether the ©ruids had 
everywhere the like authority. Their Gallic centre of influ- 
ence was Carnutum (Chartres), but they had also a British 
centre. That the Druids were not Celtic but a primitive 
priesthood disliked by the Celtic aristocrats is an hypothesis 
based on the belief that these aristocrats were " Aryan " 
and that the Druids were pre-Aryan magicians. They would 
thus belong to the religious stratum represented by the cult 
of rocks, trees, streams, and other objects of earth, as op- 
posed to the Aryan element represented by the cult of sun 
and fire. But in Gaul they were certainly much more than 
the magicians of a despised primitive culture. The privi- 
leges of this priesthood consisted in exemption from duties 
of war and tribute ; the right to punish offenders and even to 
ostracize recalcitrants. Their office made them the educators 
of the young, who were trained to memorize verses contain- 
ing their sacred lore. They appear thus, especially as this 
education is said to have sometimes taken twenty years, in the 
light of Brahmans committing their sacred knowledge year 
after year to other Aryan aristocrats, chiefly of the warrior 
caste. In another point also they resemble the Brahmans, 
namely in the feud between them and the Celtic nobles. 
This led them to take sides with Caesar against their own 
knights. It was political and not religious intolerance which 
subsequently led to their overthrow, when the knights had 
made themselves Roman favourites. Then the Druids in- 
flamed the national hatred against the Roman conquerors, 
who, however, not only reduced the Druids but also put an 
end to their *' savage sacrifices." Classical writers sometimes 
distinguish between the Druids and prophets and poets or 
bards, as Caesar, who knew them first, does not. Probably 
the immolation of victims was performed by other priests 
(we know that other priests existed), and the bards may 
have been a class apart, or, like the Irish poets, bards and 



CELTIC RELIGION 1 29 

magicians both, while diviners or seers were sometimes 
Druids and sometimes not. It is clear that the Druids, as 
the only organized priesthood, had charge of laws, human 
and divine, and that they arbitrated disputes and awarded 
penalties, exactly as did the early Roman priesthood. Per- 
mitted to excommunicate any member of the tribe, they 
were able to cut off any one who offended them from all 
social intercourse. They held court once a year in what 
was regarded as the centre of Gaul (Carnutum). They 
were acquainted with Greek letters but refused to commit 
their own wisdom to writing (exactly like the Brahmans). 
Their teaching in Caesar's time embraced the subjects of 
immortality, astrology, the extent and nature of the uni- 
verse, and the power of the immortal gods. This last item 
shows that they worshipped greater gods than the earth- 
spirits. Their religious wisdom expounded the doctrine of 
immortality, and taught an eschatology summed up in the 
words that " Fire and Water will prevail," to end the 
world in a cataclysm. By the middle of the first century 
A. D. their power had been broken. In Ireland the word 
corresponding to Druid meant no more than a magician fa- 
mous for malediction. In Britain and elsewhere there were 
later priestesses, as well as priests, corresponding to the 
Great Mother and Great Queen divinities, as well as to the 
groups of female spirits, such as the oak-spirits, Dervonnae, 
the water-spirits, Niskai, and the goddesses of cross-roads,^ 
not yet individualized. 

The festivals reveal little outside of the common (Eu- 
ropean) sun-, summer-, and harvest-rites of fertility and 
lustration, but they show a worship of the sun-god recog- 
nized by name also. At mid-summer and the " bright fire " 
(Beltane) festival of May-day, cattle were driven through 
fires and a deasil dance ("with the sun") formed part of 

1 Compare Welsh Rigantona, Great Queen (goddess) with Albi- 
orix, world-king, Caturix, Battle-king, and other great gods known 
only by such titles but identified as Mars by the Romans. Some of 
the grouped goddesses may be Teutonic rather than Celtic. 



130 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

the ritual. At Samhain, or New Year's, Oct. 31,^ the har- 
vest festival, lasting a week, with its new fire from the old, 
its savagery and licentious Saturnalia, reveals a cult of 
weapons and of the dead, the avoidance of evil spirits, in- 
jurious to animals and crops, perhaps, too, the cult of the 
Maiden, as in Greece, a spirit of vegetation in female form. 
Between these festivals came the feast of the sun-god Lug 
(cf. Lyons), celebrated with horse-races, and the driving 
of cattle through water. Its autumnal character would be 
associated with the decline of the sun and decay of fer- 
tility.2 

Probably connected with some such spirit of fertility, mag- 
nified into Mother Earth, come the teachings, vague as they 
are, concerning the fate of man hereafter. The Celt has al- 
ways loved the earth; even his other-world was terrestrial. 
The fertile Mother, who is also mother of all the lesser 
spirits of field and spring, is his Mother (goddess) also. 
There is no idea that men were created ; they descended or 
ascended from Earth, whose consort is the Dis Pater recog- 
nized by Caesar, perhaps the god represented as armed 
with hammer and cup, symbols of fertility, and like the sun- 
god, wearing three horns. The hammer and ax were them- 
selves worshipped in all probability at an earlier date. Dis 
may have been a male equivalent of Earth as her consort. 
When burned or buried the men who come from him or 
from Earth simply return to him to live happily. The 

1 With the Celts the night preceded the day and the winter the 
summer. Samhain or Samfuin was celebrated with a feast for 
three days before and three days after the day. At this feast the 
savages who celebrated exhibited the " tongues of the men they had 
slain," the greater number the greater glory. But as they cheated 
by substituting animal (ox!) tongues, it was decreed that each 
should unsheathe his sword, to test his word, for demons spoke 
from the swords in old times (Windisch, op. cit., p. 198). 

2 It still remains questionable whether the fire-practices, with fire- 
wheels, etc., were sun-rites or apotropaic. Dr. Frazer has now 
adopted the latter explanation. See the third edition of Balder the 
Beautiful, London, 1913, in which the author accepts the view of 
Westermarck, that the fire-festival was a purificatory guard against 
evil spirits. 



CELTIC RELIGION 13 1 

lower earth-spirits became later the swarm of fairies and 
brownies, who in northern lore preside over field and house. 
Yet none of these is really older than the Mother herself 
nor than the great war-goddess Andraste, to whom Boadicea 
prayed when the Romans attacked her land. Historically 
at least the great deities are old as they are long-lived. 
Rigantona (Rhiannon) the Great Queen is of old the wife 
of the king of the underworld (Pwyll), who is friendly to 
the " sons of the sea " and opposed to the gods of light 
(so that Gwydion slays his son Pryderi). In the sixth cen- 
tury at Autun there was an image carried about the fields 
to protect them in idol-form. She was called Berecyntia, 
that is, Gaulic Brigindu, a goddess, who in Gaelic form was 
mother of Ogma (Ogmios, the god of the furrow and of 
eloquence), but primarily a goddess of fire and fertility. 
As Saint Brigit ^ in Christian times she still retained at Kil- 
dare a fire-service presided over in secrecy by thirty nuns, 
who acted as vestal virgins, guardians of the fire. She 
was daughter of the " good god," Dagda, whose character- 
istic was skill or cunning (compare Daksha, the dextrous 
god in India) in Gaelic legerid, and consort of Bres, the god 
of fertility. 

What little we know concerning Celtic belief in a future 
life is gleaned from Welsh and other northern legends. 
The dead may appear as birds. Usually, however, soul and 
body live hereafter in a happy land, probably below earth, 
where there are various kingdoms and kings who contend 
with each other as in this life. Exceptionally great men 
may be transported to the Blessed Island Avallon or a simi- 
lar western home of the dead, but in Irish legends generally 
only gods and heroes go thither. At the same time, war- 
riors are supposed to be influential from their tombs and 

1 Brig may mean flame or power. Brigit was one of the MInervas 
mentioned by Caesar. She presided over healing and prophecy as 
well as fire and smith-work, either in person or as " another goddess 
with the same name." Healing and prophecy are combined here 
as in the Apollo-cult. Brigit herself is a female counterpart of the 
Hindu Brihas-pati, lord of power and patron of the fire-cult. 



132 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

the heads of the slain are offered to the mighty shades, who 
must therefore live in or on earth. Oracles at graves are 
also known; the dead speak from the tomb. These views, 
one of an earthly paradise (the Celtic other-world is a ** land 
of youth and beauty"), and one of the life in the grave 
(" the loveless land "), not to speak of the western Elysium, 
do not accord very well with the Druidic view of metempsy- 
chosis, and it is probable that the latter was not universal 
among the Celts. As debts might be paid in the next life, 
a man was apparently thought to be in some place where 
earthly conditions still hold. Stories tell how a mortal on 
earth might wed a spectre of the world below.^ The fate 
of the dead was not conditioned by ethical considerations 
and even in the transmigration-theory of the Druids there 
was no idea of gradual purification, such as is found in 
Py thagor eanism . 

Arms and ornaments were burned or buried with the 
dead and human victims also accompanied the soul, even 
the widows in voluntary suttee sometimes electing to die 
with their husbands. The dead were supposed to rise at 
the beginning of the year; Samhain Eve (Oct. 31) was the 
festival of the dead. Christmas Eve was called Mother- 
Night, when the Great Mother received the dead, probably 
originally one festival with Samhain. The Dis Pater of 
Caesar, son or consort of Mother Earth, may have been the 
god depicted as a huge dog swallowing the dead, but this is 
not certain.^ 

Of the misty myths of British-Gaelic legend that of the 
Holy Grail is the most important. It is an interpretation, 
mediaevally spiritualized, of the never-failing dish of the 
sun, as it appears in India, or of the " good god " Dagda, 
in Gaelic lore, whose guarded cauldron spins about ; out of 

1 The future world is often located under a lake. Arthur's wife 
is named "White Spectre" (Gwenhwyfar), which "suggests that 
she too played a part in a story of the same kind" (Anwyl, Celtic 
Religion, London, 1906). 

2 Others think that Dis Pater is Esus, or Bile, ancestor of the 
Irish Celts. 



CELTIC RELIGION 133 

which comes for men and gods food inexhaustible. In 
Welsh tradition it is represented by a cauldron of magic 
knowledge. Bran of Britain had a cauldron which restored 
the dead to life, like the well of Diancecht, the god of medi- 
cine of the Danu tribe. All these, together with Medea's 
cauldron and Arthur's Table Round, have been united with 
more or less plausibility as phases of sun-disc mythology.^ 

Dagda is the clever god of the tribe of Danu, mother of 
light-gods, Tuatha De Danann, defended by the sons of 
Fire, whose arms are forged by Goibniv (Welsh, Gofan- 
non), a smith-god. Another son of Dagda is Angus, whose 
music led all to follow (Pied Piper) and whose kisses be- 
came birds. The Danu tribe led by Nuada (a sun-god?) 
was opposed by the Fir-Bolgs, whose gods were giant 
Fomorachs, till Nuada lost a hand and the Fomorach Bress 
married Dagda's daughter Brigit. Mile, son of Bile, even- 
tually defeated the Danus, whose Nuada was slain by the 
Fomorach Cyclops Balor (his daughter married Diancecht). 
The Danus then fled to the western Isles of the Blest, those 
preferring to remain becoming fairy women of the mounds 
( Bean-Sidhe, banshees ) . 

Bress and his Fomorachs have been explained as fertiliz- 
ing spirits, but the Celts regarded them as spirits of storm 
and death. Perhaps, as scath-spirits, they were both giants 
and shadows. A defender of the Danu tribe was Manan- 
nan, a three-legged glorious god and also first king of 
the Isle of Man, patron of sailors and son of the sea, Ler 
(King Lear; cf. Leicester). His son is Bran, an under- 
ground giant-king, patron of bards, whose head guarded 
the land. Erin was daughter of the culture-hero Ogma. 
Boadicea (6i A. d.) was perhaps named for a Boudicca 
goddess of war, a "great queen," like Morrigan (Macha) 
and Nemetona, another war-goddess of Britain. Bran's 

1 Compare A. B. Cook, Zeus, Cambridge, 1914, p. 239 (more 
speculation than history). The Hawk as sun also enters into these 
speculations, Kirke, the Volsci as Hawks, etc., and the Troy-town 
circles. Compare the Welsh Gwalchmai and Gwalchaved (Galahed), 
Hawks of May and of Summer, respectively. 



134 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

sister, Branwen, the " fair-bosom " British goddess, is re- 
garded by some as a " northern Venus." The British 
equivalent of the Gaelic Nuada (above) is Nudd or Lud, 
who, as a king, gives his name to Ludgate and London. At 
Lydney in Gloucestershire the ruins of his sanctuary have 
revealed him as a god with a four-horse chariot and wear- 
ing solar rays, his name appearing here as Nud or Nodon. 
Lug, the long-handed Gaelic god of fire, may also have 
been a sun-god. He has already been referred to as one 
of the gods recognized over a wide area, his name (Lugos, 
probably the same) being preserved in Lyons, Leyden, etc. 
It is his son who became king of the Welsh fairies (above). 
The Welsh Arthurian tales have left a deposit of dwarfs, 
fairies, and magicians in Brittany, of cognate stock, and 
a noble circle of knights and ladies in English and Conti- 
nental literature. What the characters were originally it 
is hard to say. Arthur's queen, Guinevere, has already been 
explained as a spectre-bride. Lud was one of his knights 
and married his , sister. Gawaine may be the sun. Arthur 
himself may have been a '^ Romanized Briton " or a culture- 
hero. Merlin is undoubtedly a primitive character (Britain 
at first was called Merlin's Place). His figure reverts to 
a time when culture-gods were gradually superseding older 
deities. Arthur scorned the defence given the land by 
Bran's head and the Saxon conquest was the result. But 
Arthur passed to Avilion (Avallon, Elysium) before the 
Saxons arrived and there Is here no rumour of war, as in 
Ireland, prior to the coming of the present inhabitants. 
" Not by war and bloodshed but by justice and peace " did 
Arthur conquer the country. He taught agriculture, civil 
government, and literature by means of bards. According 
to Welsh tradition, the first " pillar of Britain " was Hu 
Gadarn, the ancestor of the Cymric race. The name Britain 
comes from Prydain, son of Aed the Great, who first estab- 
lished a settled government and was the second pillar.^ 

1 Squire, Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland, Chicago, no 
date. Aed also means fire and he may derive from a god. 



CELTIC RELIGION 135 

Yet what has been guessed about the Celtic gods is more 
entertaining than convincing and however interesting these 
myths may be, they give us no clear light on primitive Celtic 
religious belief. But they help to show more clearly its chief 
peculiarity, the humanizing tendency of Celtic religion. It 
brings the divine to earth. 

From another heroic cycle, concerning the Red Irish of 
Ulster, scholars have drawn the conclusion that the old Irish 
kings were looked upon as divine. We know that chief- 
tains were sometimes deified and that gods have descended 
to earth as kings, but it is not till the Irish legend of 
Conchobar that we hear of "terrestrial gods" (dia tal- 
maide) as an epithet of chieftains and then only because 
these chieftains claim descent from the Tuatha De Danann. 
These god-descended kings are in fact no more than the 
" god-born " chieftains of Greece, except as they are original 
gods that have been converted into pseudo-historic kings. 
One of them, famous for cattle-raiding, is Cooley (Cu- 
chuUin), the son of Conchobar's sister, mysteriously be- 
gotten by the god Lug (above), ^ and he himself per- 
haps existed only in poetry. As son of the sun-god no 
one could look at his glory; his bodily heat was so great 
that it melted snow and boiled water. It is such " kings " 
who in Irish legends suffer the taboos (gessa) of which 
much has been made in the theory of the priestly origin of 
the royal power. 

Cooley's warriors were attacked in Ulster by all the rest of 
Ireland, through the instigation of the queen of Connaught, 
at a time when they were lying magically ill (in winter, when 
sun-gods are weak?) ; but Cooley fought one chief a day 
and defeated each champion in turn, while Lug healed, his 
wounds, till the Ulster heroes recovered from their " curse " 
of illness, brought upon them by Macha, the mate of Mor- 

1 His sister Dechtire becomes a bird and devours vegetation. She 
is also his charioteer, A boy she adopts dies and turns out to be 
the sun-god, by whom unwittingly she becomes mother of Setanta 
(Cuchullin). See Windisch, op. cit., p. i34f. 



136 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

rigan, and routed the foe. This same Cooley slays his own 
son in battle without knowing it (like Rustum) and is slain 
by trickery after breaking taboo (here he eats dog-flesh). 

Another cycle of stories relates that the god Camuios or 
Cumhal (heaven?) had a son Fionn or Finn, who demands 
the kingdom, from which the Gaul has ousted him, and heads 
a band of patriots, among whom is Ossian (Oisin), called 
Fianna ("Fenians"). These Fenians mingle with the 
fairies ^ and Dagda's son gives his daughter to Finn. Sup- 
ported by the Tuatha De Danann, the Fenians finally defeat 
the king (of Ireland), who has united with the Gaul to dis- 
possess Finn. After three hundred years, Ossian, who has 
meantime been living in the Land of Youth (Paradise) with 
the daughter of Ler's son Manannan, returns to his own 
country and converses with Patrick, who exhorts him to 
weep and repent. '* Weep will I," replies Ossian, " but not 
for God, but because Finn and the Fenians are dead." ^ 

Patrick came to Ireland in the fifth century and St. 
Columba converted the Picts in the sixth century, by which 
time paganism was declared by a contemporary writer to be 
extinct in civilized Britain. Christian records have received 
beliefs already influenced by German legends.^ What we 
are fain to call Celtic in northern belief is often of doubtful 
origin, but despite wavering etymologies and daring equa- 
tions, enough remains certain to establish the broad base of 
Celtic religion. Through forms generally local may be seen 
a prevailing faith in many gods, some of higher phenomena, 
more of terrestrial powers, a special devotion to nature in 
her earthly manifestations, not unconnected with the poetic 
temperament of the people and the spirituality of the Celtic 

1 Windisch has shown that the Fenians were not a primitive race 
before the Scots, as used to be thought. Windisch, op. cit., p. 154. 

2 Squire, op. cit. 

3 Many mythological traits have been inherited by the Christian 
Church in Ireland, whose saints reflect mythological and Druidic 
attributes and whose legends have absorbed a mass of Celtic *' lower 
mythology." See on this fascinating subject C. Plummer, Vitae 
Sanctorum Hibernicc, Oxford, 1910, p. cxxix, seq. 



CELTIC RELIGION 137 

saints. Perhaps, too, the domination of the priestly power 
(the Druids), as contrasted with the freedom of the Ger- 
mans, may be a racial trait due to the mysticism of the Celtic 
character. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Caesar, De Bello Gallico^ iv. 2of., vi. i8f.; parts of Diodorus 
Siculus, Strabo, Mela. 

Pliny, Natural History, iv. I02f., etc., Tacitus, Agricola. 

T. R. Holmes, Caesar's Conquest of Great Britain and Conquest 
of Gaul, London, 1907. 

Ernst Windisch, Irische Texte, Leipzig, 1880. 

J. Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, Hibbert Lectures, London, 1888. 

Edward Anwyl, Celtic Religion in Prehistoric Times, London, 
1906. 

Charles Squire, Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland, 
Chicago, no date. 

G. Grupp, Kultur der alien Kelten und Germanen, Munich, 
1905. 

Alfred T. Nutt, Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail, Lon- 
don, 1888; Ossianic Literature, London, 1899. 

J. A. MacCulloch, Religion of the Ancient Celts, London, 1911. 



CHAPTER NINE 

RELIGION OF THE SLAVIC PEOPLES 

In English we are wont to speak of any people east of Ger- 
many as Slavic, though we sometimes call the Lithuanians, 
Letts, and Prussians West Slavs in distinction from the 
Russians, Czech, Poles, Wends, Slovaks, and Serbians. The 
former should be distinguished as Baltic and the latter as 
Slavic groups, the Baltic peoples lying between Germany and 
the true Slavs.^ The mythology of both groups is in part 
identical and they both belong to one linguistic family. The 
earliest reference to their religion may be the remark made 
by Tacitus concerning the Aestii {Germania, 45), who are 
described as East Germans worshipping the mother of the 
gods and carrying the figures of wild boars as religious in- 
signia. The connecting link between the Baltic and real 
Slavic groups is their mutual adoration of Perkunas as 
chief god. He is the god of storm and thunder and was 
formerly regarded as identical with the Vedic Parjanya 
(rain-god) ; but the etymology is now suspect. 

The first clear evidence regarding the religion of the Prus- 
sians is from the fourteenth century, at which time they are 
described as worshipping the sun, moon, stars, thunder, 
birds, and animals; almost every creature being to them a 
divinity. They are said also to have had holy groves and 
fields and waters, which were taboo to the people at large.^ 
In general the Baltic group worshipped heavenly phenom- 

1 Among these are usually enrolled the Bulgarians, but they are 
Slavs only by language, being racially allied with the Turks. 

2 The original account (1326 a. d.) of this taboo says: habuerunt 
etiam lucos campos et aqas sic quod secare aut agros colere vel 
piscari ausi non Juerant in eisdem (Usener, Gotternamen, Bonn, 
1896, p. 81). 

138 



SLAVIC RELIGION 139 

ena, especially the sun, moon, star of the morning, and dawn, 
but above all Perkunas, to whom sacrifice was made as late 
as the seventeenth century. Some mythology sprang up con- 
cerning him : his mother cares for and bathes the sun, whose 
daughter was loved by Perkunas. The sun may be the 
" horses' god " called Usinj by the Letts in the seventeenth 
century. 

Offerings were made also to domestic spirits, notably to 
the house-serpent. Every aspect of life was governed by 
its special spirit or genius, such as the spirit of house, of 
hearth, of wealth, of birth, etc. The female spirit that 
watches over the bed of the mother is also a sort of Fortuna 
or luck-goddess, like the Roman Carmenta. Other spirits or 
deities guard and care for the field, the flock, the bees, the 
bride, the groom, etc. They may be described as sacred 
specialists. 

We have already seen that certain religious phenomena 
are conspicuous in some environments while not unknown 
elsewhere, fetishism in Africa, taboo and mana in Polynesia, 
totemism in North America. So here, the special character 
of these spirits, as undifferentiated powers of an abstract, 
rather than personal, nature has been particularly empha- 
sized. Usener and other scholars following his lead (since 
1896) have made it the basic form of all religious phenom- 
ena, so that Usener himself derived all gods of the Indo- 
Europeans from prehistoric types of this sort, the closest 
analogue to the Lithuanian spirits being the Numina of early 
Roman rehgion. This is therefore the proper place to ana- 
lyse the phenomena a little more carefully and see whether 
such far-reaching results as have been drawn from them are 
fully justified. 

These Lithuanian spirits are described for us by mission- 
aries and travellers of the fourteenth and following cen- 
turies, who briefly mention with disdain the various gods of 
the people they regard (rightly enough) as little better than 
savages ; for such were the Prussians of six centuries ago, 
whose primitive religion was only gradually influenced by 



I40 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Scandinavian and Christian thought, the Scandinavians par- 
ticularly having introduced among all the Baltic tribes the 
great temples and costly images found there. 

But even according to the accounts of the missionaries, 
it is evident that the Lithuanian deities were by no means 
such sexless abstractions as Usener represents them. We 
have already mentioned Perkunas (Perkuns, Perun), the 
great god of thunder and storm common to the Baltic and 
Slavic pantheon, and obviously the greatest or one of the 
greatest divinities. He was worshipped by some tribes on 
the mountain tops and to him the oak was sacred as the 
wood from which, in conjunction with the linden, fire was 
produced; so that these trees themselves were sacred, to 
men and women, respectively. Offerings were made to the 
oak as his tree, sick people climbing three times through the 
aperture made by the trunk and bough and leaving behind 
them as offerings clothes, knives, and other things fastened 
to the tree ; or, in case money was the offering, it was placed 
on the ground before the oak. A perpetual fire was kept 
burning in honour of Perkunas. When a thunderstorm 
arose the old Prussians fell on their knees and cried aloud, 
" Pass us by, Perkunas." Sacrifices to him lasted till the 
seventeenth century as a rain-invocation, since it was he who 
sent rain. He is known as the god par excellence. This is 
surely no sexless Numen, for, as already stated, he has a 
mythology representing him as wooer of the sun's daughter. 
Even the Letts, who make " mothers " of most of the Lithu- 
anian gods, do not feminize him. The priest, Vaidelotte, 
wise man, wizard, knew him only as a mighty male god im- 
personating the same natural phenomenon that has made par- 
allel gods in other places. With him as a secondary god is 
revered Lituvanis, " rain-maker," also a male god, appar- 
ently an underling who makes the rain sent in storm by 
Perkunas. 

Another natural phenomenon is Veyopatis, god of wind, 
whom the Letts turned into a '* mother " god, Veya Mate. 
We shall have occasion elsewhere to speak of this procedure, 



SLAVIC RELIGION I4I 

but it suffices here to call attention to the fact that this con- 
version of male into female deities results in a false appear- 
ance of matrilinear and therefore earlier social condition.^ 
It is well known that the Mothers of the Letts are not earlier 
but later forms of male gods. But in both interpretations 
the deities are anthropomorphized sufficiently to be regarded 
as either male or female, not " sexless Numina." 

Corresponding, or rather antithetical, to the god of thun- 
der or the sky (Svarog, sky-god, is Russian), stands the 
figure of Zemipatis, the Earth-lord, who appears also as a 
female, Zemeluks, whom the dead serve, but chiefly as 
Zemininkas, the great god of the underworld, to whom a 
sacrifice was made at the time (November 2nd) of All-Souls, 
and in December or when bad weather was approaching. 
To him a cock and hen were sacrificed and prayer was. made. 
Each worshipper laid upon the ground some of the food he 
was about to eat and " gave thanks " to the Earth-god, hop- 
ing also thereby to get further blessings from this male 
Hades, who, moreover, was the brother of the dea terrestris 
called Zemyna, a goddess who brings blessings to households 
and lands, and is also revered at burials. 

Sun-worship is also a Lithuanian trait. Saule-le, the 
little sun, is the mother of the stars, also the bride of the 
sky. " In Lithuania," we are expressly told, " there was a 
race that worshipped the sun." An early myth represents 
him as a male god formerly captured and so invisible, till the 
stars with a huge hammer broke open his prison-house, and 
this hammer plays a part in the ritual of his worship. His 
name appears in various forms (Zvaigdukas, "Suaixtix"). 
In Kurland the peasant boys and girls at the solstice still run 
about with fire crying out, " Ligo, ligo, O Sun," that is, 
"swing" (again through the sky), an interesting reminis- 
cence of the swing-ceremony, practised also by Hindus and 
American Indians, as a sort of sympathetic magic to help 

1 Matrilinear succession itself is not necessarily early; among the 
inhabitants of Borneo, for example, matriarchy is later than patri- 
archy. 



142 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

the sun. Of moon-worship there remains a trace in the 
worship of Menu, the new moon, to whom the (eastern) 
Prussians still pray. 

Among lower phenomena are to be noticed Akmo, the 
Rock (god), Bangputtis, the "wave-blower," a water-god, 
and numerous gods of the farm, such as Baubis, cattle-god, 
Babilus, bee-god, Bobihs, garden-god, Gurcha or Kurcha, 
the corn-genius, made of the ears of corn at harvest, but 
identified with Padrymbe or Autrimpus as god of moisture 
and growth.^ 

What is true in Usener's theory is that abstract personi- 
fications are also found along v\Aith personified phenomena. 
But this is not new ; such spirits, Increase, Health, etc., have 
always been recognized. So the Lithuanian Budintaia ( f em. 
but also masc. ) is an " awakener," a spirit like the Vedic 
Savitar, and Bentis is " binder " as conciliator, the spirit 
that unites in harmony those travelling together (compare 
Lygiczus, " like-maker "). But alongside of these there are 
countless " lords," corresponding to the Vedic lord of the 
fields, such as " house-lord," " field-lord," " fountain-lord," 
"beer-lord" (Raugu-patis), who are not the things them- 
selves but the lords or gods thereof ; nor is the lord-form to 
be assumed as a " later " element. Fire is worshipped as 
" holy Ugnis," a male god, though the feminizing influence 
is felt also in the conception of fire as Ponyke or Our Lady, 
who gives omens ; as omens are also drawn from the god of 
fountains and water, to whom snakes are sacred. The 
house-snake himself is no abstraction but a real animal god, 
as is Yvas the owl (as god) or Vilkas, the wolf, to whom an 
animal is sacrificed in December with a ceremony to keep 
wolves from the herd. Even the group-spirits like the 
Veles, ghostly forms of the dead as female spirits, and 

1 Compare Usener, op. cit., p. 91, and Mannhardt, Myth. For- 
schungen, Berlin, 1884, p. 286f . ; Wald und Feldcidte, 1875, P- iQO. 
As Autrimpus interchanges with Antrimpus, so perhaps Andra is 
to be read as god of storm for Audros (sc. deva) genitive of Audra, 
storm (Indra). With Kurcha, compare the maize-goddess figured 
by the American Indians. 



SLAVIC RELIGION 143 

Laumes, forms representing nightmares, are not abstrac- 
tions but very living creatures, the former perhaps identical 
with the Vile, fairy-spirits, of the southern Slavs. They 
bring good- fortune, etc., and are anything but Numina, as 
they are passionate and unruly. 

Other forms are those of the personal genius or " helper " ; 
Puko, a sort of friendly dragon, who has a secret apart- 
ment in the house and, if served with food and drink, brings 
wealth to the house-holder ; Ausca and Bezlea, Aurora and 
the corresponding sunset-light as deity. Gyvate, the house- 
snake, may be the ancestral ghost in the form of a snake, as 
gyvas means " living one," but this is doubtful. The house- 
lord called Dimstipatis is a sort of Lar, fumi fociqiie domi- 
nus; but the regular word for ghosts ^ is Deives (cf . Aves- 
tan daevas), as "goddesses," and virtually the same word, 
Deivaites, designates the goddesses of springs and rivers 
(nymphs). An interesting parallel to the Hindu use of 
goddess as a general term for the plague-spirit is found in 
Diedeveite, " great goddess," the only name of the deity who 
brought the plague of 1571. There are also those thumbkin 
gnomes called Barzdukai, bearded men, who live under 
earth and give blessings, and the Krukai, similar dwarfs, 
distinguished by a red top, who dwell in caves and the house 
and bring luck. Along with these, but in no wise more prim- 
itive, are those abstractions on which Usener lays especial 
weight, Skalsa, Euporia, Vais-gautis, " fruitfulness-getting," 
Eratinis, adjective diminutive as god of lambs, eras, Dvar- 
gautis, " court-yard guardian," not to speak of Datanus 
or donator (bonorum), Blizgulis, snow-god ("sparkler"), 
and the tree-gods called by the tree-name, such as Birzulis, 
little Birch, as god. Yet tree-cult is not the cult of a 
Nomen. We are told that the earliest missionaries in the 
fourteenth century were routed especially by the women, 
who resented attacks on their tree-divinities, which seem to 
have been especially favoured by them. Death is not an 

1 Swetas Meitas among the Letts are " pure maidens," as beings 
of the under-world. 



144 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

abstraction and Giltine, which means death, is a goddess so 
alive that she is worshipped even now. She also as Deive, 
the goddess, is personified and has her hand-maiden, Ma- 
gila, the Grave. It is true that Gotha, the goddess of in- 
crease of cattle, is an abstraction from the word for herd, 
and that sacrifice was made to her ; and that we have com- 
panion-forms to Silvanus in Girystis, god of the wood, Lau- 
kosargas, guardians of the meadow. Further, Luck and Ill- 
luck are personified; Gondu at weddings is invoked by 
women and Pizius, invoked by men, is a phallic spirit ; but 
these are no older, so far as the evidence goes, than the per- 
sonified phenomena which have become the most important 
gods. 

A natural but striking aspect of the Lett religion is the 
conversion of Christian powers into native deities. Thus 
Maria becomes an epithet of the " Mother of Cattle," who is 
invoked as Lope mate Maria. So in Lithuanian, peklo, hell, 
gives rise to Pikulas, Pluto, as a new god of the infernal 
regions. 

As the Baltic Daives are allied to the Avestan daevas or 
evil spirits, so the general name for God in Slavic is Bogu, 
Persian Baga, as sharer or giver, the spirit called the " Phry- 
gian Zeus," Bagaios. The only god the Slavs had was Per- 
kunas, according to Procopius, though they worshipped 
rivers, springs, " and other demons." Their sacrifice was 
said to be for divination ; which aim was otherwise secured 
by water, as to the coming harvest, and by a war-horse, as to 
the outcome of battle. The idol of the god who rode this 
horse at night was a many-headed effigy destroyed in 1168. 
His name, Svanto-vit, is thought by some to be no more than 
an adaptation of Saint Vitus, but his cult, as prophesying 
god of the Wends, probably contains original elements later 
foisted upon the Saint. The Svanto-vit festival at Riigen 
was an intemperate orgy of all the Baltic Slavs. Images, 
priests, and sacred groves distinguish the Polish gods,, cele- 
brated at fixed seasons by male and female worshippers, 
who sang and danced in their honour in an unrestrained 



SLAVIC RELIGION 145 

manner. They appear to have been gods of the seasons, 
spring, harvest, etc., and not to have been ghosts or mere 
Numina. The binding up of the last ears of the harvest 
into an idol of the harvest- spirit (Kurcha) is a general trait 
of peasant religion in Europe, found not only among the 
Baltic Slavs but also among the Germans. Much in Slavic, 
just as in Celtic religion, is the primitive undergrowth 
common to all the (European) inhabitants before Aryan 
culture began. Of this sort may be the spring festival, when 
a figure representing Marzan or Marana is drowned, per- 
haps to insure future strength by passing on his power. 

How much Christian influence has made itself felt in 
Slavic religion is doubtful. John the Baptist has become 
Ivan Kupalo, the god of summer f ruitf ulness ; Perun (Rus- 
sian equivalent of Perkunas), the thunder-god, has con- 
versely become Saint Elias ; while Saint Blasius has become 
the god of herds, Volos. Idols were common, some of 
them costly. That of Perun at Kiev was destroyed in 988. 
It was of silver and gold, held a fire-stone, and an oak-wood 
fire burned ever before it. The underlying Slavic religion, 
however, is all pagan and it is apparently rather closely 
connected with Persian (Zoroastrian) beliefs, as not only 
the names but the practice testify, notably the common em- 
ployment of a dog to catch the expiring soul, or, usage of 
the tenth century, to go with a man into the next world. 
If not buried, the soul, dusha, wandered in trees ; but when 
cared for properly it went by way of the usual path of souls 
to the fields of the gods. As late as 931 a. D., a girl was 
buried with a dead man to accompany him on the journey 
into the hereafter. Among things buried with the dead the 
ladder is unique ; it is for the soul to climb out of the grave. 
Burning was also practised as well as burying. The ship- 
like shape of the coffin indicates Scandinavian influence. 

As opposed to the idea that all spirits are Numina or 
spirits of the field, stands a host of gods like Daj-bog, sun- 
god, Ogoni, Fire, Svarog, sky-god, not to speak of Domovoj, 
the house-spirit, and other spirits of wood and water, which 



146 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

latter might be interpreted as of any sort, either as hearth- 
or ancestor-spirit, and either as singular or plural, since the 
Domovoj is a sort of Penates, helpful spirit (s) of the home. 
But sun, fire, and sky still linger in the names of the greater 
gods, to reveal their original form. 

The southern branch of the Slavs (Servian, Slovak, Slo- 
venian) has a mass of tales out of which old myths have 
been extracted with more or less dubiety, tales of nymphs 
and wood-maidens, of the love of the sun-god for the morn- 
ing-star and of the moon's infatuation for the same charmer, 
though sun- and moon-cult are strange to the southern 
Slavs; especially tales of the Vile fairies (above), who 
tempt men, protect them, or destroy them. These are ex- 
plained by some scholars as vegetation-spirits, though their 
functions, which relate them sometimes to the clouds and 
sometimes to the fate of man, as influential for good or bad 
fortune, scarcely corroborate this explanation. They are 
quite anthropomorphic spirits, falling in love, becoming 
jealous and envious, bewitching, and helping man, whose 
nature they share. Spirits of illness are also recognized and 
vampire spirits who suck blood, against whom magic for- 
mulas are available. The last are generally believed to be 
ghosts. Fate or Fortune is represented as a goddess by the 
Servians, who offer her libations and coins for good luck. 
There are also kobalts and similar spirits and among the 
Russians there is a demon of cold weather; while various 
rites at the equinoxes, harvest, and spring-time keep alive 
old pagan ideas of gods of fertility, the names of many of 
them remaining only in the (present) designation of towns. 

But the remains of genuine Slavic religion are scanty 
and not very satisfactory for the interpretation of primitive 
religious notions. The Slavs have kept in touch with antiq- 
uity in preserving as gods the forms of Perkuna and Svarog 
and a few more great gods and in their adhesion to old sea- 
sonal rites ; but the interpretation of the lower mythology and 
of the influence on that mythology of later thought and of 
foreign ideas is not certain. The solar mythology found in 



SLAVIC RELIGION 147 

Mannhardt's collections ^ has no great importance for primi- 
tive Slavic religious conceptions, as a specimen or two will 
show : " I look upon the sun as upon my little mother ; so 
warm and pleasant is she ; only speech she lacks " ; " Behind 
the hill in the valley stand three silver gates; through one 
comes God, through the second comes the blessed Maria; 
through the third comes the sun with two proud golden 
steeds." The most instructive aspect of the religion as a 
whole is undoubtedly the large number of (Lithuanian, Let- 
tic) individual spirits representing material genera, as Birch, 
Sheep, Bee, and the parallel with the functional spirits of the 
Romans and other peoples. Yet because the Lithuanians 
have a " corner " spirit of the space between hearth and wall 
(like that of the Ainus), we must not forget that "holy 
fire " is a greater spirit of wider application, nor can we 
ignore the wind-god Veyo-patis as equivalent to the Vedic 
Vayu, wind-god, any more than Slavic Bogu and Persian 
Baga can be ignored in the interpretation of primitive Slavic 
religion. The mediaeval accounts of the spirits are not of 
themselves satisfactory evidence that the spirits were under- 
stood by the reporters, and the spirits appear, through the 
reports, at so late a stage as to make any induction in re- 
gard to their original nature and function extremely hazard- 
ous. The most significant religious rite recorded of the 
Lithuanians is that alluded to above, in which Perkunas' 
worshippers pray to him to *^ pass them by," as if he were 
an evil spirit, which for the nonce he was. Of ethical qual- 
ity in the divine nature there is little trace. The worship- 
pers express gratitude and have spirits of concord (above) ; 
but the only spirit indicating moral obligation is the " sup- 
plicants' god," Ublanicza. Yet Bogu as " giver " recog- 
nized man's dependence on the source of good. 

Lithuanian religion here and there shows traces of an 
undeveloped belief in metempsychosis. Undeveloped also, 
but apparent, is the belief in an evil spirit, opposed to the 

^Die Lettischen Sonnenmythen, Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, vii, 
pp. 73f., 209f., 281 f. 



148 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

good Bog, a nascent dualism. Priests of the native cult are 
lacking; wizards and witches replace them. Their temples 
were probably no more than sacred huts. Propitiation is 
the key-note of religious expression. Gratitude to the 
spirits is as rare as among the Slavs, but is sometimes 
expressed. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

F. S. Krauss, Sitfe und Branch der Sudslaven, Vienna, 1885. 
J. W. E. Mannhardt, Mythologische Forschungen, Berlin, 

1884 ; and Wald und Feldkulte, Berlin, 1875-77. 
Hermann K. Usener, Gotternamen, Bonn, 1896. 
Louis Leger, La Mythologie Slave, Paris, 1901. 
For the Lithuanians, see Mannhardt, Die Lettischen Sonnen- 

mythen, Zeitschrift filt Ethnologie, Berlin, vii. pp. 73, 209, 

281 ; and A. Leskien and K. Brugmann, Litauische Volks- 

lieder und MdrcheUt Strassburg, 1882. 



CHAPTER TEN 

RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS 

The folk-god Teutates and the possible Celtic parallels of 
Woden and Thor (above, pp. 123-5) show that there is no 
certain division between Teuton and Celt, neighbors closely 
joined and much confused even in antiquity. Many names 
of persons and places are still of uncertain origin. The 
lower mythology of Celt and Teuton coincides to a marked 
degree; for example, the elves, nixes, and pixes are of the 
same sort and the very word elf may be Celtic. The Celtic 
Mothers are domiciled on German ground and it is not cer- 
tain how many goddesses regarded as Teutonic may have 
been Celtic. In general, west of the Rhine early religious 
phenomena are as likely to be Celtic as Germanic. 

Teutonic religion is Germanic and Scandinavian, the lat- 
ter in general being recorded later. At the beginning of our 
era we know only of Germanic religion. At this time the 
Germans stood in culture below the Celts, having, for exam- 
ple, no deity corresponding to the Celtic " Minerva," as 
they were also inferior politically. On the eastern border 
the Germans appear to have surpassed the Slavs, from whom 
the Scandinavians seem to have borrowed religious ele- 
ments, as the Germans may have inherited from the Finns 
magical lore and possibly some mythological figures. 

The Germans were always notorious for their superstition, 
egotism, and tribal self-centredness,^ characteristics which 
affected belief and outward form of religion. Till the eighth 
century they remained a barbarous, almost savage, people. 
Yet some tribes were superior to others. Thus, as Plutarch 

1 Georg Grupp, Kultur der alien Kelten und Germanen, Munich, 
1905, p. 

149 



ISO THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

says that the Celts were nobler than the Germans, so Taci- 
tus says that the noblest of the Germans were those (Chauci) 
who afterwards settled in Kent and Northumbria. In Ger- 
many itself there were three general groups, the Ingaevones 
on the north littoral, the Istaevones or western Rhinelanders, 
and the middle-southern Suabians. From the first group 
came the Saxons and Angles, at the mouth of the Elbe and 
on the Cimbrian peninsula and in Schleswig. These fore- 
fathers of the English were already worshipping gods of 
peace and trade while the middle and southern Germans 
were still worshipping war-gods. The Germans had few 
kings, chiefly in the east, but lived as mutually hostile demo- 
cratic tribes; continental Saxons had no kings. Hence 
they had no general head of the pantheon ; their gods were 
like their chiefs, each of importance in his own district, per- 
haps respected outside of it but there inferior to the local 
powers. 

The Germans were not priest-ridden like the Celts ; but 
they were as awed by wise women as the Celts were by 
Druids. They had, however, certain priests, whose duties 
were largely political, though they saw to divination and re- 
ligious processions. Thus as political headmen these priests 
presided over legislative assemblies and punished criminals. 
But the chief inspirer of the " secret something " was the 
sibyl or wizardess, who was often regarded as a goddess. 
She gave prophecies, inspired councils, and was generally 
feared. Women anyway, as described by Tacitus, held a 
high position ; girls were expected to be chaste ; wives faith- 
ful to their husbands (under rather severe penalties). 
When the husband's body was burned, the good wife might 
die with her lord. So Brynhild says : '' Make a pyre for 
the Hun, my husband, and for them dying with him ; cover 
it with human blood and burn me there." Among the 
Wends the wife was burned with the husband as late as 745 
A. D., and this rite was doubtless usual among the early 
Germans, as it was among the Celts and Scythians. Ship- 
burial, with burning, was a Norse custom, illustrated in leg- 



RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS 1 51 

end by the burning of the good Balder in his ship with his 
wife Nanna. Horses and men were burned or, later, buried 
with chiefs, the practice implying a belief in a life hereafter. 

According to Tacitus, German gods were not represented 
by images and the only temples were groves. Probably the 
sacrifice consisted at first in the victim being hung on a tree 
in the sacred grove. Effigies and symbols of the gods were 
used, however, and in the north there were temples as well 
as images. In the Suabian country was revered " Isis," a 
ship-goddess (called Isis, who had a remigium, for that rea- 
son), and the northern islanders worshipped the Mother of 
Gods called Nerthus. She was carried about in a wagon 
drawn by cattle and then bathed by slaves who were at once 
drowned. A similar cult of this Mother is recorded of the 
Esthonians (Aestii), whom Tacitus regards as German, to- 
gether with a cult of the wild boar (as in the Freyr cult). 
All the Germans descend, according to the tradition known 
to Tacitus, from an earth-god Tuisto and his son, the first 
Man (Mannus), ancestor of the three tribal fathers. Apart 
from the goddesses just mentioned and a certain Tamfana, 
goddess of the Marsi, who was a deity of harvest fruitful- 
ness (she was accompanied by a dog), and another later 
known, perhaps Slavic, Nehalennia, worshipped in the pres- 
ent Netherlands, the chief deities recognized by the Ger- 
mans were, according to Caesar, Sun, Moon, and Fire, but, 
according to Tacitus, " Mercury, Hercules, and Mars." 

Caesar's account leaves much to be desired, but it cannot 
be due to a confusion between Celts and Germans ; for, after 
discussing the former, he says, antithetically : " The Ger- 
mans have no Druids to preside over religious matters, nor 
do they care much for sacrifices. They reckon as gods only 
such as they can perceive and those by whose help they are 
clearly aided. Sun, Fire, Moon; other gods they will not 
accept even when told of them. Their whole life consists 
in hunting and fighting. . . . They do not care for agricul- 
ture, living for the most part on milk, cheese, and meat. . . . 
They think it wicked to violate hospitality." In later legend 



152 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

and usage there seems to linger some remaining fire-cult. 
Milk cast on a bonfire serves as a sort of sacrifice and the 
fire of the smithy was probably revered, as was the smith. 
Wayland the Smith was son of a giant and grandson of a 
mermaid.^ Sacrifice to fire was common, as it is expressly 
forbidden by Anglo-Saxon law. These are late records and 
a race averse to agriculture does not pay much attention to 
the fire-cult or sun-cult involved in the observance of land- 
purification to induce fertility, a heathenish customi forbidden 
in the eighth century ; so that the fire-cult of Caesar's record 
remains unexplained. But it may be due partly to the com- 
mon use of fire in ordeals, such as entering flame or boiHng 
water.^ There is also a belief in flames as ghosts in 
churchyards. But the magical fire-ceremonies grouped 
about the idea of productivity and purgation perhaps imply 
riddance of evil spirits and contain enough use of fire as a 
mysterious power to enable an outsider to call them sacri- 
fices to fire. The later ritual occurred at midsummer, St. 
John's day (July 24), St. Martin's (Nov. 10), Walpurgis 
Night (May i), and especially at the time of the winter 
solstice and " Twelfth Night," when evil spirits and ghosts 
were particularly active. In the north there were the three 
annual festivals of sowing, victory (in spring), and harvest.^ 
Fires were built on the hills and fiery wheels were rolled 
about as a means of purgation and of divination, the 
torches representing lightning, etc. Bonfires were built in 
which to burn efiigies of evil spirits. From the smoke omens 
were taken. People danced about the fire. In such a fire or 

1 Forged weapons were sentient, would not work unless they 
wished, quasi divine beings. As late as 358 a. d. the German Quadi 
" worshipped their swords," but probably only as a symbol of the 
war-god. 

2 Water alone (ordeal by drowning) and blood, indicating a mur- 
derer, are also early ordeals, later supposed to indicate a judgment 
of God. 

3 There was also at Upsala in the middle ages a hekatomb at the 
feast of the nine-year cycle, in mid-winter. It is questionable 
whether the autumn festival was originally a festival of plenty 
(harvest) or, as in England, a feast of the dead. 



RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS 153 

in the so-called " need-fire," especially kindled by friction, lay 
a means of purgation ; people and cattle leaped through it. 
Sacrifice of animals was made to the gods at such times and 
the image of god or goddess was driven about the fields. 
The need-fire or " sacrilegious " fire (so called by Chris- 
tians) was particularly a fire of magical or religious import, 
to expel demons. The Anglo-Saxon " Mothers' night " 
(Christmas Eve) was celebrated with animal masks, appar- 
ently a ghost-ceremony. In Scandinavia, men, in dire cases 
kings, were burned as a sacrifice to avert famine in honour 
of Odhin. The frequent mention of the circular dance in 
connection with music and processional celebrations seems to 
look to solar magic ; but there is doubtless in all these rites 
the recognition of a divine power in fire also. It is another 
question how old these rites are and whether they may be 
referred to a remoter antiquity than that in which they are 
known to occur. They go back at least to the first centuries 
of our era and may of course be much older .^ A cult of fire 
may be the base of the Yule log rite which preserves the old 
god ; but is it a god that is preserved ? The Yule ceremony 
is not a general German rite, but Scandinavian, and not early 
(about the ninth century). Any magic practices with fire 
may easily have been interpreted as a cult. The Germans, 
like their neighbours, were devoted to all forms of magic 
and it is not necessary to suppose that they learned them all 
from the Finns, who, however, were noted magicians. 
Divination was common by means of lots, the neighing of 
white horses, a Greek and Persian belief, the flight and 
sound of birds, flow of blood, dreams, accidental meetings, 
single combats, to decide a battle, etc. The smoke of fire 
was also ominous. All these, however, showed merely the 
will of the gods. That such was the native interpretation is 
evident from the fact that the earliest diviner " looks to 
Heaven" as he draws the lots and invokes the gods. The 
chief use of fire in connection with acknowledged magic, 

1 Mannhardt regards them as pre-Aryan or European, funda- 
mentally the same in Greece, Germany, etc. 



154 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

especially in connection with the magic supposed to have 
been borrowed from the Finns, was to burn the magicians. 
The Sun and Moon cannot be identified with the names 
of German gods. The Norse Balder (lord) is a poetical 
figure, who may reflect a solar or year myth ; as the northern 
Heimdall, god of light and beginnings, who can hear all 
things and whose trump like Gabriel's wakes the dead at the 
end of the world, the guardian of the bridge to heaven, and 
contender every day with Loki for possession of the jewelled 
necklace called Brisingamen, is possibly a representative of 
daily sun-light. Loki or Logi (fire) or Lodhur ^ (heat) as 
" ender," though blood-brother of Odhin, may be the subter- 
ranean fire that will end the world; but this Scandinavian 
local mythology is inconclusive; no cult of these gods is 
known. 2 So it is only in later Scandinavian story that we 
hear of Mundilfoeri, father of sun and moon, and of the 
wolves that cause eclipses. The moon was believed to 
affect vegetation ^ and worship of sun, moon, and fire is con- 
demned by missionaries ; but all this testimony is late. We 
have indeed the precise statement in later accounts that the 
Germans or Franks worshipped sun and moon. They are so 
mythologically represented in a charm, perhaps of the eighth 
century, as healers, Sinthgut and Sunna, two sisters. 
This, however, may be a cue to the real state of the case. 
The sun is feminine and would be represented not as a god 
but a goddess. As such she may have been one of the fer-' 

1 Gentle Balder, like Adonis, is famous only because he died ; he 
may be a Danish vestige of Caesar's Sol. Loki is god and yet be- 
longs to the giants. He is subterranean (fire as ender of the 
world) or Logi, fire, who causes Balder's death, and has been 
identified with a Requalivahanus, worshipped near Cologne, as 
" darkness." Loki is father of Hel and of the Midhgardh snake. 
He may retain the nature of Caesar's Volcanus. 

2 The lateness of Walhalla and other Norse conceptions must not 
blind us to the fact that many Norse elements are old. Balder and 
Odhin and Loki revert to the seventh century at least. Balder may 
still be a form of spring or of sun ; either, rather than a former man. 

3 But our German Pennsylvanian farmers " plant by the moon," 
still believing in its potency as affecting vegetation; this common 
(even Scriptural) notion does not imply a divine moon. 



RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS 155 

tility-goddesses who are mentioned by Tacitus or one of the 
numerous goddesses of whom only the names survive, such 
as Sandraudiga, Hludana, Haeva, etc., from the Nether- 
lands and Priesland. The names of days of the week are 
drawn from outside and indicate no Germanic Sun and 
Moon days. 

The chief gods mentioned by Tacitus ("Mercury, Her- 
cules, and Mars ") can be identified with Woden, Thor, 
and Ziu, not only through the identity of the week-day names, 
Wednesday-Mercredi, etc., but through their characteristics. 
These gods were not, however, worshipped everywhere with 
like fervour. Thor is Norse and his Germanic counterpart 
Donar is a much less important figure. Again Ziu (Zio) or 
Tiu is probably a decadent god of* the sky. Woden is so 
much a god of the dead that he might easily have escaped 
Caesar's notice. There is therefore no real contradiction 
in the seeming incongruity of the pantheon presented by 
Caesar and Tacitus. That the two accounts are a century 
apart and that in the meantime the Germans had become 
more civiHzed is not of moment. National or tribal gods 
do not die so quickly and the Germans were little less bar- 
barous in the first century a. d. than in the first century b. c. 

Of the group in Tacitus, Mars is the oldest and hence 
least important. He was worshipped, especially by the Sua- 
bians who were called Ziuwari (in part identical with the 
Herminones), as a sky-god in the guise of a tribal ancestor 
called Er, Irmin (as he was also called Saxneat, sword- 
companion, by the Saxons). The ordinary form of the 
god's name is German Tiu, Ziu, Scandinavian Tyr, English 
Tiw (Tuesday), with the Frisian variant Din (Dienstag). 
With the title Saxneat or Saxnot compare the battle-cry, 
"On Saxons, seize your saxas'' (cleavers, stone-weapons). 
The god is the old battle-god, hence called Mars by the 
Romans, but at the same time he is the " regnator omnium 
deus," who, Tacitus says, was worshipped by the chief tribe 
of the Suabians in a sacred grove and to whom were made 
human sacrifices. Thus, even if Ziu-Tiu is not one with 



156 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Zeus, phonetically, the god is the same, and probably, as 
proper religious names do not always conform to the strict 
law of phonetics, the names also are one. He was, in the 
opinion of many scholars, the original chief god of the Teu- 
tons, displaced by Woden. He is not important in Norse 
mythology, though well known as a god who has lost one 
hand, like Nuada, in contest with the wolf Fenrir (i. e. 
eclipse?). He is, historically, by no means the chief Teu- 
tonic god, yet he is found worshipped everywhere, chiefly in 
the northern and central parts of Germany. Rams are sac- 
rificed to him. The existence of a Ziesberg shows that he 
was worshipped on the heights as well as in sacred groves. 
As ruler of all, and the sky-god to whom the priest looks in 
divinations (above), he may well be regarded as war-god of 
tribes whose main business was fighting. As Tig he is iden- 
tified with Mars as late as the seventh century. Thus as 
sword-god he may have been worshipped with the sword- 
dance which Tacitus regards as a sport. He was introduced 
into England as Mars Thingsus, god of the assembly, by 
Frisian soldiers (222 A. d.), but adventitiously, and as tribal 
god it is questionable whether he gave or received the tribal 
name.^ He appears as a royal ancestral lord of the Saxons 
in Essex and Wessex. 

Of the three chief gods, Thor, Odhin, and Freyr, of 
Sweden, Odhin represents the German Woden (Wuotan), 
who is the Mercury of Tacitus. He may have been at first 
the god of the Istaevones, Rhinelanders and those afterwards 
called Franks from south and middle Germany. He was 
apparently, not certainly, little regarded, though he was 
known, among the Alemanni and Bavarians and southern 
Suabians. The Suabians of middle Germany worshipped 
both Tiu and Woden; but in the south it is significant that 
Woden's day was not called thus but was known as Mitt- 

1 It is noticeable that no German tribes have names of animals or 
vegetables implying totemism. Images of wild beasts, ferarum 
imagines, carried by warriors, are mentioned by Tacitus (Hist, iv, 
22), probably the effigies and signa already referred to, such as 
Woden's wolf, Tiu's ram, and Donar's hammer. 



RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS 157 

woch. He was known as Godan among the northern Longo- 
bards, about the mouth of the Elbe, and was prominent 
among Saxons, Anglo-Saxons, and Frisians, the last wor- 
shipping him particularly with his wife (here Fria) and his 
" sons " Thuner (Thor) and Tiu as late as the eighth to 
eleventh centuries. Charles the Great in the eighth century 
suppressed the worship of Woden among the Saxons only by 
merciless rapine and slaughter. As Odhin he stands in the 
middle of the Norse triad, but here, in Scandinavia, Odhin is 
an aristocratic court-god as contrasted with Thor, the god of 
the common people. Altogether, Woden, as Tacitus states, 
was the most generally worshipped German god. 

Woden means wind (Wode is a storm-demon) and is par- 
ticularly the god who rushes along with the Wild Hunt of 
souls, to whom he is psychopomp (hence as " Mercury"). 
As god of souls he is also an ancestral god, while again as 
wind-god he brings both good and harm to cattle and crops, 
but at the same time as storm-god he is god of the storming 
host of battle. He is in many ways a parallel to the Hindu 
Indra, god of storms and battle and fertility. Odhin, like 
Indra, who " wanders " and recommends wandering as a 
cure for sin, is the " noisy wanderer," omi gangieri, but also 
a war-god to whom warriors come for help and who receives 
them into his heaven; in Longobard tradition he even be- 
comes a sky-god, as did Indra. Human sacrifices were 
made to Woden as war-god and to Odhin as war- and 
heaven-god. But owing to outside influence Odhin is ex- 
alted as lord of the Hall of the Dead (Walhalla), the very 
wise magic-knowing god of the court-poets (scalds). 
Versed in Runes, he speaks with the head of Mimir (spirit 
of water and wit), a poet by virtue of the mead made of 
honey mixed with the spittle of gods (in the form of Kvasir, 
perhaps a Slavic myth), lord of the gallows, his steed, teacher 
of battle-formations, and, finally, as an All-father (Christian 
influence), the highest sky-god, creator and director of the 
world. He gives wealth, victory, eloquence, wisdom, valor, 
and "a fair wind to sailors." At the same time in this 



158 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Norse tradition he is a sort of superman who has come 
from Asgardh (here on the Black Sea) as a man and human 
king, brother of VeH and Ve. All this Scandinavian myth- 
ology, however, is so mixed with classical, Slavic, and Chris- 
tian elements that it throws a confused light on original 
Germanic conceptions, as these are accidentally preserved in 
the mass of foreign accretions and later local ideas. Odhin 
the All-father is here, like Zeus, a god of amours and meta- 
morphoses.^ 

In Germany, the deep-seated nature of the Woden-cult 
may be inferred from the fact that as late as the eighth cen- 
tury German (Roman Catholic) priests, professing to be 
Christians, were still attending his festivals and actually 
making sacrifices to Wuotan. In the sixth century " Woden 
rewards faithfulness " is still a religious motto. Beer was 
acceptable as a sacrifice to this god in later times, as horses 
and men were given to him in antiquity. Many tree-sacri- 
fices belong to him as tree-god. Both as Woden and Odhin 
the god rides a grey horse and wears a cloak and hat, but 
Odhin only (as the price of Mimir's wit) has but one eye. 
As Mercury, the " giant Woden " invents Runes in later Ger- 
man tradition. The normal antique German weapon was 
not a sv/ord but a spear and this is his weapon. Wolves and 
ravens presaging victor}^ are Odhin's animals. 

As medicus a German charm makes Woden the chief phy- 
sician, curer of the ills he sends (compare Apollo), and so, 
in an Anglo-Saxon charm, Woden *' takes nine wonder- 
twigs,'* with them smites the adder, " and in nine it flew." 
As another parallel with Indra may be mentioned that as late 
as 1593 ears of harvest corn are left for Woden's horse.^ 
Groves (cf. Odenwald) and trees are sacred to him and as 
god of fertility his day (Wednesday) was and still is con- 
sidered by the pious German farmer as the best day for sow- 

1 All the gods, however, assume all forms, especially those of 
animals, birds and insects (as in the forms taken by Loki), 

2 In the Rig Veda, the corn offered Indra is said to be for his 
horses. 



RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS 159 

ing and planting, though otherwise unlucky as being the day 
of the god of the dead.^ 

In connexion with the Norse god only is there the " home 
of joy," Gladhsheimr, in which Walhalla is situated. There 
heroes meet to drink from cups offered them by the Wal- 
kyries, maids who elect them that are to die and then wait on 
them in heaven. A wolf hangs before the door; over the 
Hall hovers an eagle ; its roof and walls are made of spears 
and shields and there Odhin sits, rejoicing most over him 
who has killed most. It is noteworthy that these poetic 
Scandinavian gods have no inherent powers. Odhin sees 
all because of his throne. If another sits there, the other 
can see as well. Thor's strength depends on his hammer. 
Wisdom divine is in Odhin, but it is due to the magic ring 
of the dwarfs, which he wears. The gods are ever youth- 
ful only because they have the apples of Idhunn, etc. As 
has been said : " Similar conceptions are met with in vari- 
ous mythologies, but this dependent nature of the gods re- 
ceives especial emphasis in Norse mythology. Not to their 
own nature as such, but to external conditions, do the gods 
owe their power." ^ 

The third great god of the ancient Teutons is Thor, 
especially honoured in Norway and Iceland, not so promi- 
nent, as Donar, in Germany ; in Anglo-Saxon he is Thunor, 
whose day is regarded as dies Jovis (Thursday). He 
was reckoned a Hercules by Tacitus, possibly because his 
thunderbolt resembled the club of the Greek hero, but per- 

1 Some scholars identify with Woden the god Henno (Death) 
of the mediaeval oath "By Henno" and the Hiinen (the dead). 
Does our rustic oath "by hen" retain this word? Based on this 
Henno it has been urged that Woden was primarily a god of the 
dead (chthonic divinity), but this seems improbable. 

2 De la Saussaye, Religion of the Teutons, Boston, 1902, p. 286. 
The author here calls attention to the groups of gods, three or 
more. There is no original group of twelve German gods. Idhunn 
(above) has the apples of youth and is wife of Bragi, god of 
poetry. A good example of a stupid god is Hoenir, who has to 
be companioned by the clever Mimir, and when asked his opinion 
always says " Let others advise." 



l6o THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

haps also because he was extolled as " bravest of men " in 
battle, a position due to his being an eponymous hero. In 
Norway and Sweden and Friesland, where Thursday is 
Thunor's day, he is a god of the people as contrasted with 
the aristocratic Odhin, who is warlike and amorous while 
Thor is home-loving and domestic. 

The reason for this change of character lies in the fact 
that, with the aristocracy, Odhin usurped the function of 
Thor as fighter, leaving to him his other attributes of thun- 
der-god as a beneficent deity of productiveness. This again 
reverts to the fact that when thunder is first heard in the 
northern spring, it indicates the breaking up of winter, re- 
lease from the giants of cold and ice, the victory of spring 
over winter, of fertility over barrenness. The battle of the 
Norse Thor is thus a nature-contest and the farmer and 
sailor have especial interest in him rather than in the battle- 
god. So enduring is this conception of Thor that it is 
matter of record that prayers were offered to him as a fer- 
tility-god as late as the eighteenth century. As in India 
plants were named after Indra, the god of thunder and fer- 
tility, so plants were named after Thor, as thunderer. 
Hence too the notion, quite opposed to classical tradition, 
that a '' thunder-riven " tree is a tree marked out for divine 
favour, the wood of which was curative. The oak is espe- 
cially Thor's tree and as late as 730 a. d. such an oak was 
formally hewn down as a defiance to his worshippers by a 
doughty missionary, who built a Christian church from its 
timbers. Thor presided over agriculture. 

Many mediaeval superstitions go back to the belief in 
Thor's fertility. Thus Thursday is lucky for weddings and 
his hammer " hallowed " the bride, as it was a symbol of fer- 
tility. He was also guardian of law. The day of public 
meetings was Thor's day and his hammer marked the bounds 
of the court. His influence in the north is shown by the fact 
that place-names are his more than any other god's. ' His 
face also, long-bearded, is carved on rocks and served in 
effigy as guardian power of many ships. His temple was 



RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS l6l 

where the Thing or legislative assembly was held. Emi- 
grants carried him to Iceland, where one Rolf, renamed 
Thor-rolf , built him a temple out of wood transported from 
Rolf's old home in Norway. His power was great in Swe- 
den (not so great in Denmark), where he was regarded as 
ruler of the air, storm, lightning, and crops. The ancient 
saying, " Odhin has warriors, Thor has thralls," betrays his 
country popularity. It was to the professional fighting of 
the robber barons and Vikings that Thor was opposed. A 
winter sacrifice was made to him in hope of the next year's 
fruitfulness. He alone overcomes Loki and his main task is 
to fight and overcome the Joten, Anglo-Saxon Eoten, Ent, 
or giants, who in some cases are brothers of the dwarfs, in 
others independent beings of earth. 

Many beliefs current in regard to Thor show his nature, 
his red hair, like red lightning, his epithet Hlorridhi, 
*' roarer," his goat-cart, like the team of Pushan, the Hindu 
fertility-god, and his play of ninepins with the gods (the 
sound as of thunder; cf. Rip Van Winkle). His gauntlets 
indicate strength. His girdle retains his power. His ham- 
mer when thrown returns to his hand. His daughter is 
Thrudhr, power, his sons are Modhi, vehemence, and Magni, 
power (compare the north German Magusanus Hercules). 
In the world-drama of the North his nature has been some- 
what modified by poet or priest. He is regarded as son of 
Odhin in Norse mythology and his mother is sometimes 
called Jordh, Earth. He has other "mothers," but neither 
they nor Sif (sheaf) , his wife, have a cult. But it is possible 
that some nature-myth is kept in the story that the malicious 
Loki cut off Sif's hair and Thor compelled him to make 
new "golden hair" for her with the help of the dwarfs. 
This hair has been not unreasonably interpreted as the sheaf 
of golden grain.^ In general, Thor is a nature-god whose 

1 The son of Sif is Ullr, god of bows, hunt, and skates, who may 
be connected with the Frisian hell-god Holler. Hel is a place (the 
grave) scarcely personified at first, then becoming the daughter of 
Loki, the subterranean god. Balder, slain by Loki, has now joined 
Osiris and Shiva in the modern procession of "gods who were men." 



l62 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

later higher activities may have been affected by outer 
(Christian) influences. 

Wholly Norse is the cult of the " Lord " (Freyr), brother 
of the *'Lady" (Freyja), who like Baels are known only 
by their titles. The two are replicas, the male probably later 
than the female, whose relation to Nyord, the " father " of 
the pair, connects them with the mater deum Nerthus 
(above). Nyord rules wind and sea and lives in Noatun 
(place of ships) as husband of Skadhi (perhaps Finnish), 
daughter of the giant Thyazi. Adam of Bremen is quite 
precise as to Freyr, whom he calls Fricon; the god is one 
of peace and pleasure and plenty, symbolized by the phallic 
emblem.^ He and his "sister" and Nyord (Njordhr) and 
Nerthus constitute a group of Vanir gods as opposed to the 
As(aesir) gods. Productivity is the kernel of the Van or 
Venus group, as destruction is the kernel of the As (cf. 
Asura) group. The latter are not chthonic in antithesis to 
the Vanir as " light-gods," nor are the Vanir gods Slavic. 
They simply represent a phase which waxed in civilization 
and religion, while the destructive phase waned. Thus the 
early female gods of fertility are represented by Freyja; the 
patriarchal society by the tendency to make her into a male ; 
the connexion between peace and trade by the localization 
of the later cult in the north; and the phallic element, al- 
ways latent, by the remodelling of Freyja by the scalds on 
the lines of the classical Venus, with whom they were well 
acquainted. Eventually one may perhaps identify Venus, in 
Freyja form, with Frija or Frigg, wife of Tiu and then of 
Woden, probably originally a Father Heaven and Mother 
Earth pair. Freyr was carried from the Ingaevones on the 
north littoral to Sweden, where he grew so prominent that 
he was made one of the national triad with Odhin and 

Yet thus far this assumed derivation lacks not only proof but, 
in Balder's case, verisimilitude. 

1 Pacem voluptatemque largiens mortalibus, cuius etiam ' simul- 
acrum fingunt ingenti priapo; si nuptiae celebrandae sunt, sacrificia 
offerunt Friconi. 



RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS 1 63 

Thor. It was here that he became specially an amorous 
deity, as his sister became mistress of all the gods. The 
geographical relation is retained in the Frea Ingvine of Beo- 
wulf (perhaps as Freyr). The cult of Freyr is that of the 
old Nerthus: he has a spring journey in a car and presides 
over fertility and marriage. As to the Aestian mother 
of gods, the boar is sacred to him; men swear by it, the 
boar's head is a sign of fertility. To Freyr, as to other 
gods of the north, horses and men are sacrificed. His sister 
is a woman's goddess ; the cat is her beast ; dying women go 
to her. Yet to her also are sacrificed ox and boar. She is 
a female counterpart of her brother or husband, for, as it is 
wisely said, " the Vanir wed their sisters " ; historically they 
are their sisters. In the Viking myth the figure of Freyr 
has to assume more martial proportions and as Thor slays 
the " Roarer " giant Beli, so Freyr slays giants, and indeed 
from the same original notion : giants of winter and cold are 
subdued by spring and heat. Our Friday retains the name, 
perhaps originally indicative of joy or love.^ Other female 
deities of this sort may be suspected as earth or fertility 
spirits in the figures cited as goddesses of special tribes, such 
as Boduhenna (compare Henno, above), mentioned by Taci- 
tus (Annales, iv., 73) and the Batavian Nehalennia (associ- 
ated with " Hercules Magusanus " and with the sea-god), a 
goddess of fertility, with fruit and dog. Even the giantess 
Gefjon, who ploughs the land, may be of this sort, not to 
speak of the " true and happy " goddess Sandraudiga 
(above) and Vagdavergustis, whose name means " cause of 
life-power," and other deities whose names were possi- 
bly epithets of Freyja herself. The male form persists 
in the god called President (fore-sitter, Forsite) of Flelgo- 
land, reputed son of Balder. Mediaeval spirits of birth and 
death like Holda and Perchta (Bertha) are perhaps inde- 
pendent later creations. In general we may assume that 
the ancient Germans worshipped phenomenal gods,^ Sun, 

1 Compare Freund and Fraii, lady, first loved. 

2 The gods were called tivar (cf. deus), "shining ones," "those 



l64 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Moon, Fire, Sky, Wind, Thunder-Storm, and spirits of 
earth or spring as fertility-deities. In the north and later 
these gods become humanized, with familiar forms and hu- 
man attributes,^ who live in the citadel Asgardh reached by 
the rainbow-bridge Bifrost. The older Germans, instead of 
humanizing their gods thus, deified their men (ancestors). 
Yet the Norsemen also on occasion worshipped kings as 
gods. There was, however, no fellowship, no communion 
with the gods, nor had they moral significance, except as 
they guarded law and demanded courage. The Scandi- 
navian cried, " Laughing I die " ; thus only was he welcomed 
to Walhalla. A belief in Fate, the word of the Norns, is 
general; man dies as Fate decrees. Yet Walhalla is a late 
conception and the Norns are Norse creations. Hel was 
the grave, " concealing " all ; only later was it the place 
underground for the common man, as opposed to the Hall 
of Odhin for the warrior. The shipping of a dead body to 
a land across the water arose in the north with sea-farers. 
In the belief that England was engel-land (angel-land) 
there is a faith built upon folk-etymology, which tends to 
define the Hel-land or Seelenland more closely. Often the 
dead, however, live in the mountains, or in springs or gar- 
dens. 

Whether the cult of spirits as ghosts is as old as the belief 
in phenomenal gods is not a question to be answered on the 
basis of German history. All-Souls probably retains such a 
cult, as we find it elsewhere. The death at the grave shows 
a belief in life to be, and the mediaeval Woden as soul- 
leader probably points to the same fact. The practice of 
bewitching by the dead, offerings and songs to the dead, 

who measure," "binders," etc. The word god means "invoked." 
Culture-heroes are doubtful. Beowulf may be one. Tacitus men- 
tions a local cult of two brothers (Aleis) as Castor and Pollux, but 
their nature is undecided. 

1 It is only here that we find a number of abstract Numlna as 
female powers of one function. The fact that they are all late 
poetic fancies is of weight in comparing the Slavic and Roman 
Numina. 



RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS 1 65 

dadsisas, probably precedes prayers for the dead. Even fer- 
tility-gods have no recognizable connexion with the dead. 
The Walkyries are Scandinavian parallels of the (eighth 
century) German Idisi, women who preside over the fate of 
warriors and they may themselves be the " riders of the 
dead '^ of Low German belief. At any rate, they correspond 
in belief to the fighting virgins and matrons in whom, the 
Roman account says, the Germans saw divinity. They 
are like the three prophetic Norns, but they are without 
limit of number ; they sometimes assume swan- forms. The 
Norns, like the Moirae of the Greeks, belong to the giants. 
As storm-spirits, the Walkyries might themselves be ghosts ; 
but this explanation is only a guess. The soul ^ in Norse 
belief is a fylgja, follower, not an ego. It is a separate per- 
sonality, so that one may " stumble upon his own fylgja/^ 
as it goes about outside of one, hence a Doppelgdnger. It is 
the genius which leaves a dead man and enters his son, some- 
times even as a female spirit admonishing a man. A night- 
mare is a spirit or ghost. The dead live as ghosts at cross- 
roads or in animals or may come to life on earth. Metem- 
psychosis is repudiated as " old women's talk " ; but it was 
believed in old days in Scandinavia that, as the result of a 
special curse, one may not be able to live again in human 
form. The lower mythology of mediaeval times shows a 
cult of souls of the dead, of witches, ghosts, spirits of trees, 
water, springs, rivers, mountains, etc. Souls appear as mice, 
snakes (the house-snake as a Lar), were-wolves, or as trees, 
or roses, springing from the blood of the dead. The Norse 
berserkers may be bear-clothed spirits like (were-wolves) 
those in wolf-skins. The canonization of Christian souls 
retains the old cult of the dead. House-spirits in various 
forms are usually dead souls ; but there is no basis for the 
theory that spirits of forest, cave, tree, spring, etc., are 
ghosts. The *' balewise women " who, as witches,^ raise 

1 Our " soul," German Seele, may mean quick, lively, like Greek 
^y/Aos, indicating the active principle. 

2 The wise women of the north were of the seidhr or volva class. 



l66 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

storms, are also not necessarily ghosts. Even Fate, Wyrd, 
becomes a she-demon, and the peasants " Du Wind, hast 
Mehl fiir dein Kind" shows, as the child is Wind's, that 
storm may be a spirit without being a ghost. 

Elves and giants may revert in part to tales of prehistoric 
men ; but the belief in such beings is too universal to refer 
the phenomena to such a source altogether. Elves are not 
degraded, nor are giants prehistoric gods. Sacrifice was 
made to elves in Norway. They help men but also need 
human help. Giants are stupid, not necessarily hostile, but 
generally opposed to (Norse) gods. All nature is more or 
less alive. Wood-sounds prove a wood-spirit. " Feld hath 
eyen and the wood hath eres " (Chaucer). Definite wor- 
ship of streams, stones, and trees is proved for the early 
centuries of our era by exhortation against these cults. The 
old oath, '' swear by oak and ash and thorn," reflects a belief 
in these trees as spiritual powers. To whip a tree or offer 
it beer points to the same interpretation. Many such cus- 
toms have been preserved till modern times. The cult of 
trees, " blood tree," " luck tree," trees giving birth, the 
Maypole,^ the " oak of Jupiter," and even the world-tree, 
Yggdrasil (Irminsul), are probably older than specific agri- 
cultural cults, but any or all of these beliefs may be echoes 
of prehistoric times. Sea-spirits naturally belong to the 
North. There '' Sea will have sacrifice " ; but tamer water- 
spirits, water itself being a spiritual power, abound every- 
where, as springs, and rivers, personified, or as Nixes 

The former (perhaps Finnish) were sorcerers; the latter, sooth- 
sayers, who " sat out " till they got a revelation. In general, one 
was a witch and the other a sibyl. There were seidh-m&n as well 
as seidhkona, women (kona, quean), but the yolur (staff-bearing, 
wanderer) were women, and sometimes functioned also as seidh- 
kona. Compare Saussaye, op. cit., p. 389. 

1 The Maypole is not properly a tree, but represents the spirit of 
vegetation symbolized by the tree, like Adonis' garden, the Korn- 
demon or year-demon as a vegetarian god in material form. On the 
identity of the pole with the May queen, see Mannhardt, Der Baum- 
kultus, Berlin, 1875, p. 312 f. The world-tree is the product of specu- 
lative fancy, embodied first in the old Westphalian Irmin-pillar sup- 
porting the world (universalis columna quasi sustinens omnia). 



RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS 167 

(Nymphs) of a cruel disposition, liable to appear in animal 
form, and sacrificed to (especially when a stream is ob- 
structed, as by a bridge), sometimes with human lives. 
Waterfalls were worshipped by the Norsemen and " cheese 
was offered to a lake " in the sixth century. The belief of 
Mannhardt that all these items of lower mythology reflect 
the general European cults of prehistoric times inherited by 
Greek and German in analogous forms goes too far. Many 
of them are individual, tribal, national, separately developed 
out of the same material. The clay horses of a German 
fair today are like the prehistoric figures of the Greek. 
Similar intelligence produces similar results in religion as in 
art. The Redskins also worship waterfalls and the Africans 
have myths resembling the German beliefs. Nixes under 
another name five in Burmese rivers. The fashioning of the 
world from the body of an original giant Ymir reproduces 
the Vedic dismemberment of the original god Man. The 
fights with giants carried on by Thor and Freyr are like 
those of Hindu gods with the gigantic fiends. But there is 
not in Germany that thorough dualism which appears in 
Greece in the opposition between giants and gods. The Ger- 
man giants are often friendly and helpful to the gods. The 
dwarfs are Celtic as well as German ; they are artisans and 
are more deeply impressed on the popular mind than are 
the giants. They are the black elves, contrasted with the 
light and grey elves, and are often visible only when they 
lose their caps. In general, as contrasted with Slavs, whose 
cult is chiefly of house- farm- and family-spirits, the Ger- 
mans made more of the greater nature-spirits, storm, sky, 
etc. ; though they, too, revered the little spirits. 

German gods are fairly decent creations though not moral 
in the modern sense. Purity and fidelity are marked Ger- 
man characteristics from the time of Tacitus to that of the 
mediaeval sagas. The trading people of the north are more 
prudent than courageous; but treachery is hateful to the 
gods. Otherwise no ethical consideration determines man's 
fate hereafter. A man may be tricky, but not false to his 



l68 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

word. The more blood the warrior has spilled the more 
welcome is he to Odhin's hall. Bravery and faith, of which 
truth is a reflection, give the keynote of religious morality, 
and this perpetuates the simple old cult of Mars, for Scandi- 
navian belief, despite its foreign elements, is at bottom Teu- 
tonic. 

On the whole, Teutonic religion combines a crude cult 
with a crude belief. It lies between the intellectual level of 
the North and South American Indians, never rising to the 
height of the best Mexican and Peruvian religious ideas but 
distinctly surpassing, in some regards, that of the savages 
of our Northern hemisphere. It shows no deep religious 
feeling, no religious ethical system; it has no religious poet 
or prophet ; only tales about gods. It has feasts, not fasts, 
as a religious expression. Scandinavia has only a primitive 
dualism (good gods vs. giants, sun vs. darkness). Primitive 
myth and savage cult characterize this religion, which is de- 
void of spirituality and of intellectual dignity, until, prob- 
ably under Christian influence, higher ideas appear in the 
North. As compared with the Celt, the Teuton lacks even 
the druidic philosophy, as he lacks the mystic feeling, withal 
at a time when his more southern relatives had already 
passed beyond their own early view of divine things and of 
the rough gods found in the Homeric world. A thousand 
years later in developing, when fully developed (before 
Christian influence began), Teutonic thought was still almost 
as rude as at its beginning. The only Aryans standing on a 
lower religious level were the Slavs. Perhaps this was be- 
cause the unaided Aryan intellect could get no further, 
though the contrast of the northern group of Slavs, Teutons, 
and Celts, with the southern Greeks, Hindus, and Persians 
still remains as strange as it is striking, for no outside phi- 
losophy raised Greek or Hindu thought to its early eminence. 
The cleverer people may have gone south and left the slower- 
witted behind, since those who emigrate from a poor land to 
a better are usually the more progressive. Or perhaps, what 
is more flattering to ourselves, climate created culture by 



RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS 169 

forcing to quicker growth an innate power. But, since we 
have no right to suppose that language and race are inter- 
changeable terms, they that became Greeks and Hindus may 
have had little in common religiously with Teutons and 
Celts, a few deified natural phenomena, Sky, Wind, Fire, 
the greater lights of heaven, and revered ancestors ; or per- 
haps not all of these. 

We turn now to those advanced religions which have left 
literatures based upon religion. They fall into two great 
groups, one of the Far East, India, China, and Japan, con- 
nected through Buddhism ; the other of the Near East, com- 
prising the religions of Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean, 
connected partly through historical dependence and partly 
through a common stock of inherited ideas. Connexion 
between the two groups is doubtful for the early period. 
We shall begin with the religion of India, which stands in 
its beginning nearest to the religions of the Aryans we have 
already examined. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The chief classical texts: Caesar, De Bello Gallico, i. 50; 
iv. 7 ; vi. 21. Tacitus, Germania; Agricola, xxviii ; Annales, 
i. 51, seq. ; xiii. 55, seq. ; Histories, iv. 14, 22, 61, 65; v. 22. 
Pliny, Natural History, iv. 2y, seq. 

Wilhelm Mannhardt, Der Baumkultus der Germanen und ihrer 
Nachharstdmme; Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, Berlin, 
1875-77; Mythologische Forschungen, Strassburg, 1884. 

E. H. Meyer, Germanische Mythologie, Berlin, 189 1. 

W. Golther, Handbuch der Germanischen Mythologie, Leipzig, 

1895. 

F. B. Gummere, Germanic Origines, New York, 1892. 

P. D. Chantepie de la Saussaye, The Religion of the Teutons, 
Boston, 1902. (Contains an excellent bibliography.) 

S. Bugge (translated by O. Brenner), Studien Uber die 
Entstehung der nordischen Gotter- und Heldensagen, Mu- 
nich, 1889. 

The following standard works are of more general content: 
Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, Berlin, 4th ed., 1875- 
78; K. Miillenhoff, Deutsche Altertumskunde, Berlin, 1870- 
92; Germania Antiqua, Berlin, 1873, a collection of texts. 



CHAPTER ELEVEN 

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA 
I. FROM THE VEDAS TO BUDDHA 

When the Aryans invaded India they found in the Punjab 
certain snub-nosed black-skinned natives v/hom they reduced 
to submission. These were probably Dravidians. A few- 
centuries later, along the Ganges and in the hill-country 
south of it, they came in touch with other wild tribes, gen- 
erally called Kolarian. The religion of all these savages 
was animistic, in part totemic, but also a form of nature- 
worship. The southern Dravidians today retain under a 
later mask, easily removed, much of their old belief. They 
are agriculturists and each village has its own Great Mother 
spirit, sometimes without any other name, sometimes with 
several names, who is represented by rough stones in a 
shrine or a tent (tabernacle) used temporarily, when the 
goddess is needed, as when plague breaks out. Often a 
post or a mere pot of water is the goddess. The people 
offer her flowers and on occasion, because she is angry, an 
animal sacrifice, in which the animal's blood is used for fer- 
tility and medicine. The Mother guards her village; a 
boundary-stone keeps out evil spirits. A female ancestress 
is the great divinity of some tribes and sends them all their 
woes. The hill-Dravidians (Khonds) kill a pig, whose blood 
falls into a pit, and suffocate a human victim in the pit, bury- 
ing his flesh at boundary-lines, the victim being a youth pre- 
viously carefully tended, like an Ainu bear. The Kolarians 
worship stones at the foot of a tree, the snake and tree, ani- 
mals, animal-totems, earth, the sun, etc. ; recognize spirits 
swarming everywhere, have sacred groves, dances, and songs, 

170 



THE VEDIC RELIGION OF INDIA I7I 

and many believe in metempsychosis. Sun, earth, rain, 
seasons, are all divinities ; smaller phenomena are regarded 
as possessed by spirits and ghosts. Eschatology is on a par 
with that of our Indians. Some native tribes, however, had 
developed considerable skill in building and represent a com- 
paratively high civilization, from which the Aryans bor- 
rowed. 

The original inhabitants thus offered to the Aryans a field 
like that offered to the Greeks by the " Pelasgians," marked 
by a religion of ghosts, ghouls, spirits, and animals, with 
some nature-cult and temple-service, but sharply contrasted 
with the warrior-religion which overcame it and yet was 
deeply influenced by it. This Aryan warrior-religion looked 
rather above than under the earth and cared more for gods 
than for ghosts. Such is the religion common to the in- 
vaders of Greece and India and the early Teutons. The 
chief Indie Aryan gods are mentioned about 1400 as the 
gods of a people who had not yet got beyond Cappadocia, 
probably on their way to India,^ as Varuna, Mitra, Indra, 
and (the healing twin gods) Nasatya. 

The invading Aryans were not agriculturists but warriors, 
whose wealth and occupation were cattle and lifting cattle. 
There were no castes, but there were priests who served 
the Three-and-Thirty gods (Zoroaster's " thirty three 
lords"), with oblations of beer, soma, Zoroaster's haoma, 
on a spread of straw, used in both rituals, at the hands of 
" oblationists," so named in both cults, and praised them 
in verse measured like the Gathas of Zoroaster. In fact, 
the two religions were simply different phases of one. The 

1 Scholars are divided as to when the Aryans first entered India 
(by the way of Persia; there may have been a prior invasion from 
the northwest). Some ascribe an absurd antiquity to the Vedas, 
the first literature. Conservative writers have always held that 1200 
B. c. is as early as we have any grounds for dating the Rig Veda, 
and, in fact, 1000 b, c. is early enough to account for it, a date which 
brings it into a needed proximity to the Zoroastrian Gathas, which 
in language and ideas represent an intimate and close temporal con- 
nection with the Vedas. 



172 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Veda recognizes the Wise Spirit (Asura) of heaven, wor- 
shipped by Zoroaster, but not so universally. It was an 
aristocratic cult,^ as Zoroaster's religion, too, was aristo- 
cratic. But many clans scarcely consider this Wise Spirit. 
They prefer the worship of the god of storm, war, and 
fertility, Indra, to whose service the Rig Veda is chiefly de- 
voted; while Zoroaster recognizes such nature-spirits, but 
only as inferior to the Spirit of Wisdom. At the same time 
in the Rig Veda appears a subsidiary cult of Sun, Father 
Sky, Wind, Mother Earth, Fire, Wind, etc., perhaps of stars, 
and the very important cult of Manes and of Yama, lord 
of the dead, now blessed, living with Yama, Zoroastrian 
Yima, in a heavenly paradise. As in Germany, the cult of 
Dyaus (Tiu, Zeus) is observable but it is already decadent. 
The same gods, in other words, are here the object of a 
cult as were found in Teutonic and Slavic religions and for 
the most part with identical names, even to the smaller 
members of the pantheon. House-lord, etc.^ 

In its cult of Sky, Wind, Sun, Dawn, and other trans- 
parent gods (a convenient term invented by Usener), its 
noisy beer-ritual, and its simple morality of truth and brav- 
ery, the Vedic religion is still quite crude, though it has a 
complicated ritual, which, with the skilled versifiers and 
astute priesthood, shows that it is no longer primitive in the 
sense of being naive. Some of its priests were mercenary, 
some were poets and philosophers. Before the end of the 
first Vedic period, the priests had already clouded the faces 
of the nature-gods, recognized a unity underlying spiritual 
plurality, speculated as to the origin of being, established an 

1 Varuna, the wise spirit of the Rig Veda, is recognized as belong- 
ing to the warrior class, of which he is king. As a western god 
he is connected with the night-sky or as the night-sky with the west. 

2 Thus Vayu, Dyaus, and Agni, wind, sky, and fire. The twin- 
gods are in nature one with Castor and Pollux, as sun, Surya, 
is Greek Helios (serius). Indra may be the Anglo-Saxon ent, giant. 
Slavic Andra (audra). With the Wise Spirit (Asura) called 
Varuna is associated Mitra (Mithra), ** twin lords of right and 
light." Varuna especially "hates the lie," and punishes wrong, but 
forgives the penitent, as does the Wise Spirit of Zoroaster. 



THE VEDIC RELIGION OF INDIA 173 

elaborate religious mysticism, and swept the devil-cult and 
witchcraft practices aside as a kind of magic fit to be re- 
corded only in a heap of mangled verses drawn mainly from 
the Rig Veda and devoted to demonology. Eventually this 
heap was elaborated into an independent Atharva or Fire 
Veda, though fire in magic had been largely displaced by 
charms and antidotes. It lingered on in popular literature, 
however, while in the priestly ritual it was made a minister 
of the Soma-cult. That the lower cult of demons grew 
pari passu with the submergence of the Aryans in the flood 
of animistic natives, and that the Atharva Veda is at least 
several centuries later than the Rig Veda, are facts often 
overlooked by those who assume that the lower cult was as 
important to the Aryans as was the higher. It is significant 
also that the priests ministering to the Atharva cult were 
always of inferior sort and generally despised. 

The trend of thought in the Vedic age was rather toward 
consolidating gods than toward exalting any one of them. 
For this reason the cult of Varuna declined and the popular 
Indra became not exactly an all-god but an any-god, who 
was conceived as greater than heaven and earth and as em- 
bracing the functions of other gods. A vagueness of this 
sort led to the dimming of faith. Synthesis began. Mock- 
ery followed. The orthodox were described as *' involved 
in fog and talk " ; the three fires of sacrifice were declared 
to be the same, " these three are one." The Goddess Un- 
limited (mother of the gods) was first postulated and then 
declared to be " all things." And again : " Being is one ; 
it has the names of different gods." Thus, rather than by 
expelling other gods, as in Palestine, or by subjecting other 
gods to one, as in Babylon, India reached the idea of *' the 
one spirituality " ; though antithetic to this trend there was 
also a new development in the creation of a Lord of Beings 
or Father-god, who emerges at the end of the first Vedic 
period. He is Creator of gods and men, but remains always 
rather a figure than an active personality and is eventually 
calle^ the Power (Brahman). 



174 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

After perhaps a couple of centuries the Aryans drifted 
down to the Ganges valley, where they appear as agricul- 
turists and townsfolk, farmers and merchants, with a large 
dependent population of native blacks. And as the brave 
Aryans of the Punjab had gods in their own image, so now, 
when castes had formed and priests were the power behind 
the throne, these priests made the gods over into their own 
image. From now on the mass of gods appear only as evil- 
minded, cowardly, bargaining creatures, who disputed about 
their honoraria (sacrifices), and themselves made sacrifices, 
just like priests. Town life, with a body of slaves largely 
drawn from wild tribes, brought up new gods from the 
dregs of un-Aryan society. So rose the fearful form of 
the new storm- and fertility-god, disease-sending, lightning- 
using, Shiva. In the meantime the priests exalted the cult 
of the sun as Vishnu, with whom later were identified 
Krishna in the West and Rama in the East. Vishnu, 
the wide-striding Vedic god, who " makes day " and is 
" swift in going " is formally recognized as the creative 
sun and "highest of gods." The farmers, though holding 
tenaciously to their " Aryan rights," to drink soma and 
learn the sacred lore, soon became practically as inferior to 
the aristocrats of the court, nobles and priests, as farmers 
and traders always become when brought up against those 
who have specialized in ruling by force and trickery. The 
aristocrats of this time said openly that the middle classes 
were nothing more than " food for warriors," and the priests, 
who served only the nobles, their best pay-masters, and 
professed to be " earthly gods," gave up almost entirely the 
old religion. They simply ran a complicated machine of 
sacrifice, costly and cumbersome, wholly magical in purpose, 
as spellbinders of mystic spells. What they revered was the 
mystic Power of the spell, which they made a divine, even a 
supreme Power called Brahma. 

Incidentally the secondary ritualistic texts of this period 
(c. 800 B. c.) tell us of the first Man (Manu), possessor of 
a minotaur whose bellow destroyed demons ; of the Deluge 



THE VEDIC RELIGION OF INDIA 175 

(perhaps of Babylonian origin), from which Manu alone 
was saved in a ship by means of a Fish (as the fish-god Ea 
saved his worshipper) ; of the tower on which demons tried 
to scale the sky; and recount other native or foreign ideas 
now domesticated. In the service, the chief distinction is 
that offerings are laid in a pit for the Manes and in fire 
for the gods. Human sacrifice has never failed in India; 
but it was now formally ignored in favour of horses, bulls, 
buffaloes, goats, and rams. Harvest festivals and daily do- 
mestic sacrifices were regularly made to the gods. Manes, 
and spirits. At the winter solstice there was a rite to expel 
demons, bring rain, and produce fruitfulness. Seasonal sac- 
rifices took place every four months. Sympathetic magic, 
rites of expiation, an all-souls feast, a rite through which 
girls got husbands by propitiating Shiva, expulsion of de- 
mons by satisfying them with blood poured on the ground, 
by noise, smells, and fire, fasting and chastity as necessary to 
religious rites, sacrifice, as a communion, a bargain, as piacu- 
lar and as apotropaic; a gradual change from an under- 
ground pit as the ghost-home to the place of torment for sin- 
ners, a resurrection, but of shining bodies, and a sensuous 
paradise for the good in Yama's, later in Indra's, heaven, — 
these are the prominent features of the decadent Vedic age, 
in which an abstract Creator, as '' Lord of beings," towered 
above the gods of old. 

Of survivals from earlier stages it is difficult to speak 
with certainty, since we are not sure what survives and 
what has been taken from neighbouring Dravidians and 
Kolarians. Thus the Khasas are regarded as a warrior- 
clan and profess to be Rajputs, but they are only half Hindu 
and still practise the custom of having one wife for sev- 
eral brothers. Totemism may have come from the Oraons 
(mouse-totem) and Garos ; but Aryan totemism, if it existed, 
has left no sure trace, only animal-worship, withal the wor- 
ship of an animal as representing a god temporarily. Really 
divine animals like the cow are more divine (to the Brah- 
mans) later than earlier. Many famiHes are called by ani- 



176 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

mal names. Gods too are represented by animals, Indra 
and Shiva, generative gods, by bull and boar; the sun by 
a horse, a goat, etc., incarnations of divinity. The horse- 
sacrifice celebrates the sun as a horse and might be a re- 
flection of the same spirit as that shown to the Ainu bear, 
for the horse is told that it is being sent to heaven. But 
a divine animal is never sacrificed to itself in Vedic reli- 
gion. There is here no slaying of a god, at least to Hindu 
thought. Yet the sacramental meal is found, especially in 
connection with the Manes, with whom the worshipper com- 
municates in the eating of the gods' food. The prevalent 
beHef in the efficacy of foundation-sacrifices is established 
by the Vedic building-ritual. Of the earth as a vegetation- 
deity demanding human sacrifice, there is no trace before 
Shivaite worship, which includes that of the Mother god- 
dess, a horrible monster of the wild-tribes. She is the 
female power and human victims were offered to her (as 
goats are now).^ 

But ritual and magic made only one side of the later re- 
ligion. There were still philosophic priests, able successors 
of those Vedic seers, who had asked " to what god shall we 
sacrifice ? " (only to the great Creator, they meant) ; who had 
argued that '' desire is the seed of mind " ; who had made 
the " Soul of the world " their quest and said " in man and 
sun is but The One." One such later priest, vexed with sac- 
rificial hocus-pocus, cries " How can people believe such 
stuff? " Others left the sacrifice for the study (the forest) 
and from them come what we call the Upanishads or later 
treatises of secret wisdom, disjointed, tentative, illogical 
studies, crude, and still clinging to the old mythological re- 
ligion, but containing earnest and deep inquiries into the 
great problem of the age, the nature of God and man's 

1 See on these points a paper of Professor A. B. Keith in the 
Journ. Royal Asiat. Society, Oct., 1907. Professor Ridgeway's sug- 
gestion that the Shiva was once a man may be ignored, as may 
Herbert Spencer's older contention that Ushas, Dawn, was once a 
lady whose carriage was smashed by a rude Mr. Indra. 



THE VEDIC RELIGION OF INDIA 1/7 

relation to the divine Power or Self (Soul) of the world. 
Here begins the first enunciation of the doctrine of the 
everlasting effect of the Act. Whatever we do or think 
(thought also as action) makes its mark on our soul and 
according to the state of the soul thus marked will be our 
fate hereafter. The faint beginning of this doctrine called 
Karma (act) is Rig Vedic, where one is told to " join his 
good works " in heaven and in the sub- Vedic idea that one 
by good works, merit stored up, can get " beyond the 
sun " and so escape recurrent death. For the complete 
doctrine also aims at suppressing the recurrent " death and 
birth wheel '^ and placing the perfect man beyond fear of 
metempsychosis. This doctrine assumes universal applica- 
tion, for Karma affects all, from the Creator to a blade of 
grass. In popular presentation, since it soon lost its esoteric 
form, it teaches that a thief becomes in the next life a 
thieving animal, etc.; but it had to cross the older view of 
hell and in fact soon united with it. A taste of hell-torment, 
followed by a new birth according to his former deeds, was 
every man's prospect; or first a taste of heaven, and then, 
when the stored merit was exhausted, like a spent balloon 
a man dropped to earth and was re-born according to what 
his previous life had been, the good, their evil purged away, 
in a high caste, the very good as a god. Such a man be- 
comes a '' god by merit " as distinguished from a " god by 
nature." But the wise man who discards sacrifice and 
rites goes direct to the Brahma and returns no more. Only 
he who " knows Brahma " can do this. But herein the 
whole religious paraphernalia of the past is really flung 
overboard. Only the figment that rites were a sort of 
preparation for higher knowledge saved religion, in the old 
sense, at all for the mystics and philosophers. Belonging 
to the priestly caste, they were reluctant to dismiss as en- 
tirely useless the ancient ritual. Knowing it was useless in 
itself, they made it preparatory, symbolized it, turned it into 
a power-mystery for themselves and continued to teach it to 
the unintelligent as still valid. There was no hypocrisy in 



17^ THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

this, for to the ordinary man incapable of philosophy the 
rite was all that bound him to religion. 

Ethically the late Vedic religion is supported by divine 
precedent. The gods love truth; purity is the first step to 
divinity ; no sinner can know Him who is sinless. " The 
Soul of the World is pure, like a light within the heart. To 
attain to it one must be truthful, practice devotion (ascetic 
fasting, etc.), gain knowledge, be abstinent." The Abso- 
lute (Power) in the Upanishads interchanges with the per- 
sonal Self (Soul) of the World. This absolute soul is all, 
spirit and matter ; it is pure being, good, intelligent, blissful, 
and if one really knows that one's self is one with that Self, 
one becomes in fact that World-Self, one merges into it, loses 
individual consciousness, becomes a part of the whole, un- 
conscious of difference.^ Indefinable is the Soul of the 
World, to be defined only as "not this, not that" (so the 
mystic of the Middle Ages says " God is Nothing "). There 
is here no doctrine of illusion; the world is real. Yet the 
weight laid on spirituality leads to the antithesis between 
purest soul and not purest, partly because the first is not 
transitory, as all material things appear to be, and again hu- 
man life in its round of birth and death contrasts with the 
state of " not death " ; for pure soul, the unincorporate alone 
is really blissful. 

In this last deduction the Upanishadist comes to the point 
where he touches Buddhism with its slogan, " birth is sor- 
row." Insight and mystic communion with the All-Soul 
enable the philosopher to become " awakened," the very word 
describing Buddha. Ascetic saints of this sort devoted 
themselves to divine knowledge as a secret sacred posses- 
sion. But they began also to distinguish between soul and 
spirit, as that which is of and in the world, respectively, 
thus leading in the latter case to dualism. The secondary 

1 At this stage begins the rapt mysticism of the later Vedic age, 
afterwards methodically cultivated and systematized as Yoga-dis- 
cipline, by which the soul acquired aloofness from matter and be- 
comes master of secret powers. In the Vedanta All-soul belief a 
similar process leads to absorption in the All-Soul. 



THE VEDIC RELIGION OF INDIA 179 

Upanishads reveal, moreover, the inevitable tendency to 
make concrete the image of the Soul, as Lord, hence as a 
personal God, and hence again as a God upon whose will 
and grace depends the worshipper's weal, nay his very abil- 
ity to know that God, knowledge of whom is salvation. 
The next step is to know His name (sectarianism). On 
the other hand, following the tendency to divide the universe 
into matter and spirit, some maintained that there were 
individual spirits without number, but these were meshed 
in matter, till release from all material bondage made them 
free. This tendency dissipated the idea of an All-Soul 
and resulted in pure dualism (Sankhya philosophy), but it, 
too, succumbed to the inevitable and made into highest spirit 
one of the freed spirits as Supreme Spirit, though not as 
Creator God. Mystic exercises (Yoga discipline), reduced 
to a science, mark this religious phase, which has a further 
well-defined tendency to regard physical attitudes as phases 
of religious growth. 

In the meantime the masses continued to worship all the 
religious phenomena of their inherited faith, physical ob- 
jects, ghosts, and gods above, with a sectarian growth 
leading to the Shiva and Vishnu cults. The hypostasis of 
Brahma was retained as Brahman the Creator. The masses 
kept, too, the hope of a happy hereafter in a joyous material 
heaven. Song, dance, and mimetic exhibitions, not too nice, 
accompanied religious festivals. In short, as is sometimes 
forgotten, the common people remained frankly Vedic in 
their beliefs, fears, and hopes, undisturbed by the disquisi- 
tions of the mystics. Most of the population were now not 
Aryan at all; but all who could, called themselves so and 
invented pedigrees which Aryanized them. At the same 
time they clung to their old native gods ; so these gods were 
brahmanized too and called " forms " of this or that great 
recognized god, a process still going on in India, where 
every wild-tribe devil is converted by the Brahman priests 
and becomes a form of Shiva or of Vishnu. On this un- 
ending undercurrent of the popular religion, with its cult 



l8o THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

of spirits, ghosts, and godlings, its spring-festivals, its 
maintenance of the old domestic rites, its attention to the 
dark, the productive, the mysterious, we cannot linger, but 
must turn to the great heresies of the sixth century, b. c. 

JAINISM 

At this period religious interest was rather an affectation 
of the petty Rajas who ruled along the Ganges from Delhi 
to Benares. Like Akbar, they liked to encourage religious 
and philosophical debates and pretend to take a part in them 
and even to decide them. In the tumult of warring sects 
of this time, two (there were many others) came to lasting 
prominence, Jainism and Buddhism. The former was the 
older. The name comes from Jina, conqueror, a title be- 
stowed upon triumphant leaders of sects, who had con- 
quered all controversial opponents and also conquered for 
themselves whatever bliss true religion may win. In this 
case the conquering Jina was Vardhamana or Mahavira (d. 
484 B.C.), pupil of a certain Parshvanatha. This Maha- 
vira either magnified his teacher's order or instituted one of 
his own, whose members called themselves Nirgranthas 
(Emancipated). They did not believe in the authority of 
the Vedas nor in the existence of God, but adopted a dual- 
istic phftosophy. Certain illuminated human beings of the 
past became their objects of adoration. These were called 
Tirthankaras, whose images today adorn the Jain temples. 
They taught also that animals should not be injured and are 
still famous for the care they take not to injure life. Sal- 
vation, they believe, depends on faith in their founder as 
a saviour, through his teaching how men may become 
emancipated, on a right understanding of his doctrines, and 
on right living. The soul must cease from restless activ- 
ity; a man may even starve to death with this end in view. 
If thus calmed in life, it afterwards enters an existence of 
peace, bodiless and immortal. This sect, despite its heresy, 
has not antagonized the Brahmans, as it clung to rites and 
ceremonies. It has existed for 2,400 years, being espe- 



JAINISM 



l8l 



daily prominent in West and South India. It practically 
worships the great Jina and his predecessors, for, like the 
Buddhists, the Jains believe there were many Jinas. It 
was always a formal sect and one of Mahavira's disciples 
called Gosala founded a dissenting sub-sect which after- 
wards (circa 300 b. c.) were called the Digambaras or 
naked ascetics as opposed to the Shvetambaras or slightly 
clothed. Originally, however, Gosala, representing the 
Ajivika-sect, was a " livelihood " man or professional beg- 
gar, whose life was morally objectionable; but he defended 
it on the score of determinism, disclaiming freedom of will 
and moral responsibility, views offensive to Mahavira, al- 
though he also was a naked ascetic. The Jain church in 
general allowed its lay brothers to build nunneries and 
monasteries, whose members constituted the bulk of the 
faithful. Owing to the great number of Jains and their 
influence upon art and science, the religion is one that cannot 
be ignored, though it has added little to original thought 
or religious expression. The Jains of today are a pleasing 
sect, who make an excellent impression owing to the ab- 
sence of idols and of grosser superstitions in their religion 
and to their placid and gentle demeanour.^ Mahavira and 
Gosala were the most prominent leaders of the eight sects 
of the period which Buddha regarded as teaching wrong 
doctrines, four of them being antinomian (incontinent) and 
four being " unsatisfying." 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

W. Crooke, The Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern 

India, London, 1896. 
Arthur Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, in Grundriss der Indo- 

arischen Philologie. 

^ Not so pleasing to western taste is the Jains' objection to the 
destruction of vermin. At the present day the need of reform has 
been felt by the Jains and various societies have been organized to 
put fresh spirit into the sect, which, as is admitted by themselves, 
has become too strictly ethical and lost whatever religious enthus- 
iasm it ever had. 



l82 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Adolf Kaegi, Der Rig Veda, Leipzig, 1881 ; translated by R. 
Arrowsmith, Boston, 1886. 

J. Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, London, 1868-1894. 

Vedic Hymns, translated in Sacred Books of the East, xlii and 
xlvi; Shatapatha Brahmana, ibid., xii, xxvi, xli, xliii, xliv; 
Upanishads, ibid., i, xv. 

Whitney and Lanman, Atharva Veda, translated, Cambridge, 
Mass., 1905. 

A. Barth, The Religion of India, translated by J. Wood, Boston, 
1882. 

H. Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda, Berlin, 1894; Die Lehre 
der Upanishaden und die Anfdnge des Buddhismus, Got- 
tingen, 1915. See also under Buddhism. 

M. Bloomfield, The Religion of the Veda, New York, 1908. 

E. W. Hopkins, The Religions of India, Boston, 1895. 

Paul Deussen, Sechsig Upanishads des Veda, translated, Leip- 
zig, 1897; The Philosophy of the Upanishads, Edinburgh, 
1906; Outline of Indian Philosophy, Berlin, 1907. 

Paul Oltramare, L'histoire des idees theosophiques dans I'Inde, 
Paris, 1907. 

L. von Schroeder, Indiens Literatur und Cultur, Leipzig, 1887. 

Mrs. Sinclair Stevenson, The Heart of lainism, London, 19 15. 

Jain Suttas, Sacred Books of the East, xxii, xlv. 

E. Hoernle, Ajivikas (sect of Gosala), in Encyclopedia of Re- 
ligions and Ethics. 

L. D. Barnett, Antiquities of India, London, 1914. 

J. B. Pratt, India and its Faiths, Boston, 191 5. 



CHAPTER TWELVE 

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. II. BUDDHISM 

Buddha, the Awakened, is the title given to Guatama (Go- 
tama), a reputed prince of a Shakya clan living north of 
Benares in the sixth and fifth centuries (d. 482 B.C.). It 
is not certain that he was an Aryan ; his conventional head- 
dress of curly locks and his clan-name have been thought 
to show descent from a northern, perhaps Scythian race. 
His history is made up from later accounts and is pre- 
sumably largely legendary. At the age of twenty-nine (says 
tradition) he became a practical pessimist, disgusted with 
the rotation of life and death (the Karma doctrine is tra- 
ditionally assumed), and, to seek an escape, studied with 
various philosophers whose wisdom turned out useless. At 
last, after seven years, sitting under the Tree of Enlight- 
enment, he became by intuition the Enlightened, or Awak- 
ened. He gained a few disciples and thereafter preached 
his doctrine through the little world known to him, founding 
an order of mendicants as the nucleus of a church to which 
lay members were admitted. He also, rather reluctantly, 
permitted women to join his order, as nuns under supervi- 
sion of the elders of the church. Tradition tells of a rapid 
growth of the order, far too rapid to believe. Buddha died 
at the age of eighty. Until the emperor Ashoka became 
a Buddhist the sect was probably only one of a number of 
similar religious growths. We really know little about it 
till Ashoka's time, the middle of the third century b. c. 

Buddha is represented as conversant with other philo- 
sophical systems and he may have known ^ the older Upani- 

1 Oldenberg, Die Lehre der Upanishaden und die Anfdnge des 
Buddhismus, Gottingen, 1915, believes that the Upanishads were a 

183 



1 84 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

shads, though he ignored their basic idea of a world-soul; 
the individual soul he rejected. The Upanishads rather ex- 
ulted in the bliss of being perfect than sighed over life as it 
is; they were joyous rather than sad; their pessimism was 
only implicit. But Buddhism from the beginning was 
grounded on grief. Buddha's first awakening came when, as 
a boy, he beheld human wretchedness ; the wail over the slav- 
ery of birth and death was the prelude to the final note of 
hope. 

Of course, where hope exists pessimism may be converted 
into optimism. With the expectation of eventual salvation 
no religion is thoroughly hopeless. But, in respect of life, 
no religion is so frankly pessimistic as primitive Buddhism, 
for in its scheme life includes existence in heaven as well 
as on earth, and both forms of life are to be got rid of as 
soon as possible. The peace of Nirvana comes from elud- 
ingjoye £nd Uf e. "' -■-- ~ 

It is sometimes said that, in contrast to Christianity, 
Buddhism is not a religion of faith but of reason. But 
Buddhism is a religion of unquestioning faith. Not only is 
the doctrine of transmigration accepted on faith,^ but the 
authority of Buddha and of his law is not to be disputed for 
a moment. The Veda is not more holy to the Brahman 
than is the word of Buddha to the Buddhist. 

Buddha scoffed at the idea of a Creator and denied the 
existence of a soul. He probably believed, however, in 
gods, godlings, spirits, and the usual demons of his age, 
perhaps accepting them merely because they were not worth 
arguing about. What he taught as essential was the rem- 
edy for the grief of existence. This is embodied in the 
Four Truths: i, Birth and death are grief; 2, this grief 

western, Buddhism an eastern product, centuries later than the ear- 
liest Upanishads (p. 288). He also thinks that Buddha knew the 
(western) Sankhya philosophy only by hearsay. Jacobi, on the other 
hand, opines that Buddhist categories reflect the Sankhya. 

1 It has been questioned whether Buddha himself taught the 
Karma doctrine. The Four Truths (below) ignore it. But the 
doctrine was accepted by all Buddhists as orthodox dogma. 



BUDDHISM IN INDIA 185 

of existence is occasioned by desire (*' thirst ") ; 3, it ends 
when desire ends; 4, desire may be extinguished if one 
follows Buddha's Eight Rules, couched in the formula: 
Right belief, right resolve, right word, right act, right life, 
right effort, right thought, right meditation. Following 
these eight precepts one attains to extinction, Nirvana, of 
desire and its fruit. This extinction may be attained in 
life here, so that one may " enter Nirvana " while still on 
earth. The condition of Nirvana is as negative as the 
Brahma of the priestly philosophers. Buddha himself 
studiously avoided all opportunities to explain Nirvana, 
though many were offered him, and explicitly declared that 
the less people indulged in vain imaginings as to life here- 
after the better. This alone shows that the speculative 
metaphysics of liberal Buddhism is not based on the Mas- 
ter's thought or utterance. Primitive Buddhism has a psy- 
chology (of a sort) but no metaphysics and no eschatology. 
It is simply a rationalistic ethical system, teaching that every 
man may be his own saviour. 

The value of Buddhism as a religion does not lie in its 
originality, for the " desire " motif is pre-Buddhistic,^ nor 
in its psychology, which, though curious, is valueless, but in 
what Buddha considered as of the slightest importance, its 
moral excellence. Buddha frequently insisted upon moral- 
ity but only as the first plunge into the stream carrying one 
to salvation. Yet, seen at this distance, what Buddha be- 
littled becomes the corner-stone of his own worth. For 
amid the ethical chaos of a time when to be a noble or a 
divine was to be noble and divine ; when only a philosopher 
could attain salvation; when even philosophers were de- 

1 As this is often ignored, it may be well to point out that the 
Upanishad series kama kratu karma implies that only he dies not 
(again) who desires not. "Desire, determination, deed" (and 
death) is what is meant by the series. Desire leads to will (deter- 
mination), this to acts, and this to continual new fruit and death. 
But he who is without desire dies not at all; he "enters Brahma" 
(becomes one with the Absolute Being). Brihad Ar. Upanishad, 
iv. 4, 5f. 



1 86 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

cadent antinomians ; ^ when the common man had no hope 
of salvation save through magical ceremonies; when spir- 
ituality was submerged under ritual, and ethics had scarcely 
any religious basis — then Buddha arose and said : 
" Enough of rites that no one understands in honour of 
useless spirits. Every man makes his own fate. I preach 
simple truths; I have no esoteric doctrine. My Way is 
open to all, to the lowly as to the exalted. Not high birth 
makes a man a (true) Brahman — he uses this word ex- 
actly as if one should say a worthy Christian — not birth, 
not wealth, not learning make a man worthy, but a pure 
heart, a good character, a noble aim in life. This alone 
makes a man worthy ; but to be greedy, passionate, a slave 
of lusts, desirous of vain and wrong things, is to miss the 
first step toward emancipation. Better is a slave who lives 
nobly than a noble who lives slavishly." In this Buddha 
was original. In denying soul and God, he was but one of 
many contemporary unbelievers. 

Though Buddha was born an aristocrat and associated 
with his equals, he laid no stress on caste and so admitted 
into his order those of low birth. If we may believe the 
artless tradition, even thieves and robbers became hypo- 
thetical Buddhists (as murderers in the Middle Ages fled 
to the altar), since the Buddhist mendicants were immune 
from punishment. All this made for democracy, though 
it was not Buddha's intent to assail the political and social 
order. Caste at that time and in his part of the country, 
round about Benares, was not the onerous burden it has 
since become, but a natural division of the people into royal 
(and noble), priestly, mercantile, farming, and slave classes. 
Buddha lived on perfectly good terms with the Brahmans, 
who had been accustomed for generations to hear all theories 
of life discussed and were themselves the chief innovators 
of ideas in the realm of metaphysics and psychology. The 
only Brahmans condemned as Brahmans by Buddha were 

1 Four of the eight philosophical systems to which Buddha ob- 
jected were opposed to morality (professedly "incontinent"). 



BUDDHISM IN INDIA 187 

those who pretended to worth on the strength of birth. He 
taught the people the plain rules of conduct conducive to 
emancipation, emphasizing above all the impermanence of 
all constituent things, the non-reality of " soul," and the 
need of suppressing " thirst," that is, of extinguishing the 
craving for a heavenly existence and its delights, which 
is detrimental to a calm and reasonable life on earth. His 
Eight Precepts showed how such a life might be attained. 
" Right belief " means that one must not blindly accept 
traditional teaching in regard to " soul " and other beliefs. 
" Right resolve " means that one must be of a lofty mind. 
" Right life and effort " mean that one should so live as not 
to injure other living creatures ; one should learn to control 
oneself. 

The old thought of the Upanishads was that the universe 
is a whole and that individuality, enforced by rebirth, implies 
ignorance, which results in sorrow ; but in Buddha's con- 
ception the thought is rather that the release from individ- 
uality ends the struggle of existence, which it is a gain to 
lose altogether, for its grief is great. It remained for the 
later church to rediscover the gain of continuing to live in a 
higher form of life. 

According to the creed ascribed to Buddha, error is a 
state of bondage represented by ten " fetters " or delusions, 
which a Buddhist must unfasten. These impediments of 
truth are not only the delusions of ignorance, self -righteous- 
ness, pride, and the desire for future life in a bodiless or 
embodied form, in heaven or on earth, but also the delu- 
sions of ill-will and lust, and, further, three most important 
delusions, first, the belief in soul, second, the lack of belief 
in Buddha as a guide, or in the law, order, and training, 
or in Karma, and thirdly, the belief that rites and ceremonies 
are a means of emancipation. To doubt the Buddha, his 
law and order and the training enjoined by him, and the 
doctrine of Karma, is entered as one " fetter of doubt " 
and is regarded as the most important delusion next to the 
belief in a soul. 



l88 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

As Buddha did not believe in soul, he had in reality no 
psychology, for there was no psyche. The Brahmans be- 
lieved in a special entity, defined as being the size of a 
thumb, concealed in the body and called the real Self or 
soul, Atman, the Ego. Buddha said that there was no such 
soul, only a complex or confection of thought and feeling, 
all the qualities and capabilities of this confection being 
expressed as form, sensation, conception (perception), dis- 
crimination (or action), and consciousness (or sense). 
This quasi Self begins its career conditioned by Karma, 
which comes from a former life and is due to ignorance. 
This leads to a predisposition to action and to action itself ; 
and this, again, to consciousness ("recognition"). Con- 
sciousness, one of the elements of this Self, is then the 
prius to self -consciousness or individuality ("name and 
form ") ; from which comes the group of senses, producing 
touch, which leads to sensation. Out of sensation comes 
desire, and from desire comes attachment, from which, in 
turn, arises a state of becoming, leading to actual being and 
birth, and, finally, from birth comes pain, (grief). As a 
chain of causation explaining individual existence this con- 
geries has obvious defects. Ignorance must have come from 
a previous birth, for ignorance of the Four Truths is in- 
tended, as the only alternative is to suppose that ignorance 
implies the doctrine of cosmic illusion. But as the first 
link in the chain leading to being, it cannot explain being 
which it presupposes. Who or what possesses ignorance 
before possessing consciousness? The usual discourse on 
the Four Truths and Eight Precepts does not suggest the 
necessity of going back of " desire " as an explanation of 
existence. The chain appears to be an attempt to foist a 
Yoga scheme upon an original Buddhistic scheme. Some 
texts make consciousness the first link in the chain. But 
though the scheme may not be Buddha's own, the belief 
in Karma must belong, if not to him, at least to the early 
teachers, as it permeates Buddhism. One of the Nikayas 
(Anguttara) says: "Deeds ripen; when they ripen one 



BUDDHISM IN INDIA 1 89 

experiences the fruit thereof, either in the present or in a 
subsequent Hfe." This is quite Brahmanistic in its clarity 
as to Karma and its fruit. 

Desire in this philosophy means a craving for the satis- 
faction of living, leading to attachment to the world and 
life. It is not love or passion, but the two are included un- 
der it. Many passages show that, to the Buddhist mendi- 
cant, love and even affection were as dangerous as passion. 
He must break all home ties; must not be fettered by a 
love of family any more than by a love of woman. Buddha 
himself set the example of abandoning those who loved him. 
Desire is legitimate and even needful when it means the 
desire of a better life, the desire of ^mancipation; but all 
ties including earthly love must be got rid of : " He whot 
is free from love is free from grief and fear." Buddha 
was afraid oi womejt; regarding them as " torches that 
light the road to hell," and only protestingly permitted them 
to enter the order. But there was no restriction put upon 
the laymen regarding marriage, though love was felt to be 
an obstacle to his releasd" The Buddhist in general, whether 
mendicant or layman, is enjoined to have an all-embracing 
compassion and pity rather than love for others. Every 
excess, even of sentiment, is deprecated. One must follow 
the Middle Way, avoid all extremes, not be very ascetic 
nor too prone to pleasure. It is a reasonable doctrine and 
the disciples are not at all unhappy. They loudly delight in 
their lives of " joy without enemies, health among those 
that are ill." Their pure pleasure is in feeling that they 
are free from the burden of fear, superstition, and cere- 
monies. They can even attain the perfect state of extinc- 
tion of evil (desire and its fruit) in this life. They do not 
look forward to another, but, like philosophers, calmly con- 
tent await the end. 

There is, however, another side to this peaceful serenity. 
The primitive Buddhist of this sort is almost too self-con- 
tained, too cold, too fond of rejoicing in his own health 
when others are ill. He appears to be a sensible but very 



190 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

selfish individual. He saves himself alone. He recognizes 
no obligation toward others save the negative one of not 
injuring them. He embraces all in his rather contemptu- 
ous " pity," but he is far from exerting himself to aid any 
one. Each for himself, is his creed. Buddha, he believed, 
renounced his own emancipation to preach to others; but 
it does not occur to the primitive disciple to do more than 
preach in the present. He has no ambition to be born again 
for the good of mankind. He lives to become a Worthy 
(Arhat), one worthy to escape the coil of life. 

In the course of time this began to seem rather a narrow 
view and by the second (perhaps third) century b. c. the 
tendency to imitate the Master affected the church and 
later led to division of doctrine, eventually causing the rise 
of the school known as Mahayana, Great Vehicle. The 
Bodhisattvas, as the adherents of this school termed them- 
selves, basing their beHef on a reputed saying of Buddha, 
held that Gautama Buddha was only one of a series of 
Buddha-existences, who had given up felicity to aid the 
world and save others. All men may become Bodhisats, 
" creatures of wisdom," and this accordingly is the goal 
they ought to seek. Each should follow the Master and 
like him save others. Altruistic as was this aim, it was 
looked upon at first as rather an ideal than a practical 
procedure and the Mahayana way was more praised than 
pursued (circa 200 B.C.). But with this idea of self-sac- 
rifice went also a different conception regarding Buddha. 
He was now no longer looked upon as a mere man but as 
a superman; his birth, it was said, was accompanied by 
flowers falling from heaven ; at his death the earth quaked ; 
his mother was a virgin, his birth was immaculate ; in short 
he became a supernatural being. - This thought, that Buddha 
was more than man, probably began soon after the Mas- 
ter's death and by the time of Ashoka, in the third century 
B. c, it was not only established but embellished, while 
every century added to the tale, so that both the Hina and 



BUDDHISM IN INDIA I9I 

Maha (Little and Great) Vehicles devoutly believed in 
Buddha's supramundane powers and excellencies. 

When to this was added the idea that to be a Worthy 
(Arhat) was really an unworthy aim, that any one might 
become a Bodhisat, and that, when a birth or two more 
had loosened the last tie, one might even become a Buddha, 
the way was open to the creation of endless superhuman 
beings of Bodhisat and Buddha nature. Naturally, too, the 
Bodhisat in embryo rather looked down upon the unworthy 
Worthy. Then he began to taunt the Worthy and called 
his brother's faith and school the Defective School (Ve- 
hicle) or the Little as compared with his own Great School; 
though it was not for centuries that the Great Vehicle 
showed numerical superiority to the Little Vehicle. In the 
sixth century a. d., the disciples of the old school still made 
two-thirds of the church. 

While these schools divided the church, they did not 
cause a schism. All were still one flock, though they were 
in very different folds. In some regards the Great Vehicle 
became a better vehicle of religion than that of the primitive 
church. It had a higher ideal; it developed a new phi- 
losophy, which practically taught the existence of a saviour 
and a God. But in its emphasis on the spiritual side, it 
neglected the mental discipline and self-control of the older 
school and lost itself in fantastic imaginings. It won its 
ideal from idealism, which it apparently borrowed from 
Brahmanic philosophy. The primitive church had three ar- 
ticles of faith embodied in the confession of the neo- 
phyte : " I believe in Buddha, as a sure guide, in the 
Dharma (the law of Buddha), and in the Sangha (church)." 
The " body of the law " was to the early church a literal 
body of law, or at most it was the Buddha still incarnate, 
so to speak, in his doctrines. But the word dharma, 
meaning " support," meant not only the hold, the law, but 
also the thing that holds, even the substance, and, as it were, 
playing on the last meaning, the Great Vehicle interpreted 



192 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

this Dharmakaya (body of dharma) as the eternal being 
or support and substance of the world (what other systems 
call the Absolute). Moreover, this school taught not only 
that Karma might affect others as well as one's self, but 
even that it might be transferred from one individual to 
another; more strictly, that the merit obtained by Karma 
might in the infinite mercy of a Bodhisat serve as a kind 
of vicarious atonement. Buddha taught, according to the 
old texts, that Nirvana was the extinction of desire and 
its fruits (individuality, rebirth) and likened this extinction 
to that of a lamp : " What remains when the flame is ex- 
tinguished ? '' To him, metaphysical questions, even the 
question whether man lived at all hereafter, were " walking 
in the jungle of delusions." He said most emphatically, 
when pressed for an answer : "" When one who is delivered 
from individuality dies, he goes out like a flame and can- 
not be regarded as existent. That by which they say he is, 
exists for him no more." He acknowledged no Supreme 
Being, who is all intelligence and love, such as the " Body 
of Dharma " is conceived by the late Mahayana. The Little 
Vehicle made Buddha the Tathagata, *' he who has arrived 
(at the goal)." The Great Vehicle made him a form of the 
Bhuta-tathata or Godhead as ultimate postulate of existence. 
This interpretation is probably not older than the fifth cen- 
tury A. D. In it the Absolute appears in three forms, a kind 
of trinity, first as the " Body of transformation," that is, as 
the historic but divine Buddha in the flesh ; then as an infinite 
yet corporeal " Body of Bliss " (answering to the concep- 
tion of God as a person) ; and then as a *' Body of Exist- 
ence," the Godhead or Ultimate. It (now He) appears as 
a supramundane power in the form of Amitabha, endless 
light, Amitayus, endless life, Vairocana, the glory or 
sun, Maitreya, the loving one, names of Buddhas, exist- 
ing or to come, as forms of the principle of existence. Ac- 
cording to the Mahayana, the cosmic unity called "Body 
of Existence " is an object of religious veneration and wor- 
ship, for it is a spiritual existence ; it has thought and action 



BUDDHISM IN INDIA 193 

and will. It may appear anywhere on earth as a particular 
being, Buddha or any other sage, so that modern adherents 
of this school regard Christ and Confucius as such par- 
ticular forms of the Dharmakaya. Any man, though sub- 
ject to organic laws, may be or must be a part of this tran- 
scendental intelligence. It is thus, in Brahmanic language, 
" qualified " or " non-qualified." As the latter, it cannot 
be defined, for to define is to confine, to limit, and it is 
illimitable. It is a void, emptiness, as transcending form, 
a " vast vacuity and nothing holy," as the prince of Benares 
said when interrogated by the Chinese emperor, a no-ness, 
reminding one of the " no, no " (negation) of the Upani- 
shads when explaining Brahma. Yet this no-ness is the 
fountain-head of wisdom and compassion and as such cor- 
responds to God. Naturally, with this view of the Bod- 
hisat and the Dharma, was associated the soul-theory, which 
to Buddha was anathema. It was, in fact, current soon 
after his death, for " soul-view " is expressly stated to be 
a heresy of the early church, and it afterwards became a 
general belief. Yet some Buddhist philosophers repudiated 
not only the soul of the individual but, in their later discus- 
sions, extended the anatman, non-soul, theory even to a re- 
pudiation of the noumenal reality of existence. 

The Bodhisat cannot rest in the bliss of Nirvana but must 
satisfy his unselfish heart by saving others through various 
means, such as giving over his accumulated merit. As a 
Buddha, this being can manifest himself everywhere at 
once; light streams from his forehead; he appears like an 
angel, but not as a " messenger " of another, for he acts 
of his own volition. To attain this state, however, the 
aspirant must pass through ten stages. In distinction from 
the primitive Hinayanist (adherent of the Little Vehicle), 
the Bodhisat may be. termed the liberal Buddhist, not wholly 
on account of his faith but because of his general attitude. 
The primitive is a formalist. His law says *' kill not," and 
the Little-brother will not go to war. But the Great- 
brother fights; he also mingles with the world and even 



194 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

ventures to define Nirvana itself as " the flow of life and 
death," yas samaras tat nirvanam} Sin and evil are to 
him but phases of Nirvana, which is the purification of 
existence. Thus Nirvana may appear as the Absolute, as 
when Nirvana is one with Dharmakaya, or in the form 
attained by men, with a residue of pain, or in a form of 
supramundane bliss, also attainable by men, where the 
pain of birth has ceased, or, finally, in the form attainable 
only by a Buddha, in which intellectual prejudice, the hard- 
est tie, and all other fetters have been broken. Not all the 
Mahayanists hold all these views. Some are Nihilists and 
some belong to the Yogacara sect, a purely ideal monism, 
for like the early church the Great Vehicle has different 
schools within itself. Another, though slighter, difference 
between the teachings of the two main bodies may be no- 
ticed. The doctrine of the Middle Way always meant to 
the Hina school what Buddha repeatedly declared it to be, 
a mean between indulgence in material pleasures and ascet- 
icism. The Mahayana interprets it as a mean between ex- 
cess of sentimentality and excess of intellectuality. A rea- 
sonable avoidance of sensuality and of self-torturing ascet- 
icism is thus converted into the avoidance of too great in- 
tellectual effort as well as of hedonism. 

We must notice here the fact that the most striking paral- 
lels between the narrative or legendary elements of Bud- 
dhism and Christianity come from the later Buddhist his- 
tories, some of which belong to a period long after the 
Christian era. Certain stories are common to both Bud- 
dhist and Christian tradition and were probably developed 
independently in each. A very few offer parallels so close 
as to make it quite possible that one church has borrowed 
from the other. Popular books on the subject are apt to 
exaggerate both the number and character of cogent paral- 
lels, while minimizing the important factor of dates, as 
when, to support the thesis that Christianity borrowed 

1 For this reason no one definition defines Nirvana. It was literal 
extinction to Buddha, but. to Buddhism it became bliss and heaven. 



BUDDHISM IN INDIA 195 

from Buddhism, it is stated that Buddha preached so that 
all who heard him, no matter what the hearer's mother- 
tongue, could understand. This gift of tongues is indeed 
suggestive of a loan, but as it is first found in a Ceylonese 
work of the thirteenth century the borrower cannot have 
been a Christian. Jataka parallels are all taken from a 
" History of Buddha's Previous Births,'' which dates from 
the fifth century a. d., though containing, of course, older 
matter. But if a parallel occurs only in the Jataka prose, 
as we have it now, it cannot be assumed that it is pre- 
Christian. The Presentation in the Temple is a parallel of 
uncertain date, but only later writers make the child to be 
" twelve years of age,'* apparently borrowing from Chris- 
tian tradition. The fast and temptation in the original form 
differ materially from the later. The fast was one of 
twenty-eight days; later tradition made it forty-nine days. 
When we consider that a forty-days' fast is quite Jewish, it 
does not seem reasonable to draw the conclusion that 
Buddha's fast was converted by a loan into that of Christ. 
Buddha's temptation by the Evil One (Death) is certainly 
much older than the story of Christ's temptation by Satan 
and it is historically possible that the Christian story was 
borrowed; but again it may have been independently con- 
ceived. Finally, some of these parallels are plain fakes, 
invented for popular delusion, such as the statements that 
Buddha was born on Dec. 25th and began to preach at the 
age when Christ began to preach. Buddha was thirty-five 
or thirty-six when he began to preach (he spent seven years 
in study after deserting his family) and his birthday is 
unknown.^ 

1 This loan-question is, in any event, not important. It is an his- 
torical problem concerning minor details of the intercourse between 
Christianity and Buddhism, affecting no fundamental truths or 
teachings in either religion. The Roman Catholic Church, doubtless 
by accident, has admitted a form of Buddha into its list of saints and 
such later loans may well have followed earlier loans. They begin 
to be probable in the Apocryphal Gospels of the second century, at 
which time there really seems to have been Buddhistic influence, felt 
and retained by the Christian Church. Christianity appears to have 



196 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

The Buddhist church as a rehgious machine was of im- 
mense value. The earlier Brahmans had no congregation, 
no body, no authoritative head; they were a heterogeneous 
group of mutually antagonistic sages and priests, forever 
rivalling and belittling each other, without closer connex- 
ion than a loose caste-relation. Buddha founded a church 
which made a compact organization. Each congregation 
locally met twice a month to confess faults and later showed 
respect or worship of Buddha by erecting tumuli over his 
supposed remains and offering flowers there. The mendi- 
cants were vowed to moderate privation, could not accept 
gold, had to sleep on the floor, might not use garlands and 
perfumes, nor eat at night. The lay brother and mendicant 
both were vowed to ordinary rules of morality: not to kill, 
steal, lie, or drink intoxicants; to be pure, abstemious, and 
to abstain from plays, dancing, and singing (probably more 
or less immoral). The mendicant might leave the order and 
join it again at pleasure. While a mendicant, he begged his 
food daily and devoted the rest of his time to meditation or 
suitable conversation. The early Buddhists were not strict 
vegetarians, as they became later. 

Adopted as a state religion about the middle of the third 
century b. c. Buddhism was soon introduced in the primi- 

penetrated into India before 300 a. d. Christian docetic doctrine 
may have been affected by Hindu philosophy. Garbe years ago 
rightly made a distinction between the N. T. Gospels and the Apo- 
cryphal Gospels : " The narratives of the canonical Gospels which 
accord with Buddhist stories do not at all bear a specifically Bud- 
dhistic or even a specifically Indian character ; their origin is entjrely 
comprehensible without the hypothesis of an Indian derivation. On 
the other hand, the stories of the Apocryphal Gospels, parallels 
to which exist in Buddhist literature, shows genuine features of 
India's romantic lore." Contributions, Chicago, 191 1, p. i. See on 
this subject the author's India Old and New, p. I25f., and more re- 
cently the less probable speculations of Garbe, Indien und das 
Christentum, Tubingen, 1914; also the searching criticism of Vallee 
Poussin in the Revue des sciences phil. et thiol., 1912, and Kennedy 
in the Journ. Royal Asiat. Soc, 1917. Of the four "parallels '' now 
recognized by Garbe, two are not found till c. 500 a. d., the third may 
be as late, and the fourth (the temptation) is of very general 
character. 



BUDDHISM IN INDIA 197 

tive form to Ceylon and the East; in both forms it came to 
China in the first centuries after our era and to Korea and 
Japan from the second to the sixth centuries a. d. Burma 
and Siam, where it was introduced in the fifth and seventh 
centuries, A. d., respectively, alone keep the primitive form 
of Buddhism, though in Burma the Buddhists today are 
really animists. Ceylon now has a mixed type, originally 
primitive but overlaid with liberal doctrine. 

The literature of both Vehicles is enormous and can here 
be sketched only in outline. The canon of the primitive 
church consists of three collections (Pitakas) called Dis- 
cipline (Vinaya), Logia (Sutta), and Mental Conditions 
(Abhidhamma), to which as supplements are appended the 
Jatakas (Birth Stories), and various bodies of songs and 
aphorisms, such as the Hymns of the Elders (Theragathas) 
and the Path of Religion (Dhammapada). There are so- 
called histories (Vamshas) of Buddha and of the Ceylon 
branch of the primitive church and a heterogeneous epical 
history of Buddha called the Mahavastu containing much 
late material of stories and marvels, dating in its entirety 
from the first to the fourth century of our era. Ashvagh- 
osha, a great poet of the first or second century a. d. (pos- 
sibly later), wrote a Life of Buddha in poetic form, of 
which a part only is extant. The author was a converted 
Brahman of the Little Vehicle, who afterwards formulated 
or adopted the principles of the Great Vehicle, laying great 
weight on hhakti, loving devotion to Buddha as a divine 
saviour, an element foreign to primitive Buddhism. He 
may be the author of the Awakening of Faith (Shrad- 
dhotpada), translated into Chinese in the sixth century. 
Another writer of this school is Buddhaghosha, who, be- 
sides commentaries, wrote (c. 500 a. d.) a work called the 
Way of Purity (Visuddhismagga). The Wonder Tales 
(Avadana) belong to both schools. The most important 
texts of the Great Vehicle are the Lalita Vistara ("Long 
account of the Sport " of Buddha as a godlike being) and 
the Sad-dharma-pundarika (Lotus of the True Law). The 



»t^' 



19^ THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

former appears to be a revision and extension of a Hina 
text compiled by sundry authors from the second or third 
century to the fourth or fifth, possibly the sixth, century 
A. D. In it Buddha is surrounded by 33,000 Bodhisats and 
knows sixty-four alphabets, including those of the Huns 
and Chinese ! The Lotus was known to Fahien, a Chinese 
pilgrim, circa 400 a. d., and was probably composed a couple 
of centuries earlier. It is one of the nine late texts of the 
Great Vehicle, revealing a very advanced state of religious 
art and representing Buddha as God (Creator of the world 
and self-existent), whose grace alone can save. Religion in 
this period becomes a mere act of devotion; to bow to 
Buddha is all that is necessary ; all else rests with his grace. 
The Buddha most affected in the Lotus is called Avalo- 
kiteshvara, " looking down " (with pity), while in the Suk- 
havati (Happy Land), another text of this school, the most 
praised form is that of Amitabha ("endless glory"). 
These two are the texts regarded as authoritative in the 
Shinshu sect of Japan, while Manjushri, a Bodhisattva next 
in dignity to Avalokiteshvara, is the ideal of the Japanese 
Kegon sect. 

In reading and citing from this literature it must be re- 
membered that even the canon of the primitive church was 
not reduced to writing till long after the time of Buddha, 
and though by the time of Ashoka it probably existed some- 
what as it is now, yet no mention of the Tipitaka (three- 
fold canon) is made before the first century of our era, 
while all the Great Vehicle texts are at least as late as the 
first or second century after Christ. The Jatakas were not 
reduced to writing till 500 a. d. Passages cited from the 
Lalita Vistara, for example, may be as late as the third, 
fourth, or even sixth century a. d. Only when one of 
these late texts is corroborated by other irrefragable evi- 
dence may it be used to depict Buddhistic belief of the 
early centuries b. c. The same remark applies, though not 
so drastically, to the canon called Tipitaka. It may in any 
one case indicate the belief of the Buddhists of the third 



BUDDHISM IN INDIA 199 

century b. c. and it may not. No one can tell what addi- 
tions were made to the Pali texts ^ before they became what 
they now are. Buddha's own Logia were not in the same 
dialect as that of the Pali texts, and after he uttered his 
sayings centuries elapsed before any written record was 
made of them. Still less is it probable that the scholasticism 
of the Abhidhamma reverts to the fifth century b. c.^ The 
philosophy of both the Little and Great Schools probably 
reflects centuries of contact with Brahmanism and it is a ^ 
significant fact that the greatest Buddhist philosophers were 
converted Brahmans born several centuries after the Chris- 
tian era. 

How far the philosophy of Buddhism represents the re- 
ligion at all, may be questioned. Most of the early Bud- 
dhists seem to be satisfied with the simple scheme of salva- 
tion, not from sin but from life, expounded in the dis- 
courses of Buddha. But the thought of the Brahmanic 
disciples who were converted to the Buddhistic faith in 
the first centuries of our era was already primed with their 
own previous philosophy, just as that of the Christian Fa- 
thers of the third century was primed with Greek thought, ' 
and their adhesion to Buddhism resulted in transforming that 
faith into schools of philosophy reflecting Brahmanic ideas. 
The most prominent of the early Mahayanists was a Brah- 
man philosopher, Nagarjuna, who lived a little later than 
Ashvaghosha, possibly in the second century a. d. He 
represents the Negativist or Nihilist school of Madhyami- 
kas,^ who deny all existence. A work called Prajnapara- 
mita in 100,000 verses is ascribed to him. This work and 

_ 1 The Little Vehicle texts appear chiefly in Pali, a conven- 
tionalized dialect of the Ceylon branch; Buddha spoke in the 
Magadhi dialect. Most of the Sanskrit Buddhistic works belong to 
the Great Vehicle. 

2 This is the cool assumption made in a recent translation of the 
Abhidhamma. It is about as reasonable as to refer to Augustine's 
works as theology of the year one. Buddha was of the fifth cen- 
tury B. c, but Buddhistic works in their present form are all much 
later. 

3 See for this school L. de La Vallee Poussin, Le Buddhism, 



200 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

the (Great Vehicle text) Sukhavati-vyuha are said to have 
been translated into Chinese in the second century of our 
era (the oldest Chinese translations of Buddhist texts, 6y 
A. D., may not be from Mahayana texts). 

Ashvaghosha himself was perhaps the founder of the 
idealistic school of the Mahayana called Yogacara, but this 
is usually referred to the later Asanga. The doctrines of 
this school derive from Brahmanic Yoga and may even 
have been influenced by Manichaean and later Platonic 
ideas. The Bhumishastra of the Yogacara was translated 
into Chinese before 421 a. d. and this work is ascribed to 
Asanga. If not the founder of the Yogacara, Asanga is 
at least its representative teacher. His school, like the 
Shunyavada or negativist doctrine, denies phenomenal exist- 
ence, but it recognizes existence in thought, and hence is 
called idealistic (it may be called a dogmatic realism). On 
the whole we may set the systematic exposition of the 
Yogacara in the fourth century a. d. Asanga was active in 
the latter half of the fourth and first half of the fifth cen- 
turies (375-450?). Asanga and his older brother Vasu- 
bandhu were Brahmans of the Kaushika school and were 
converted to Buddhism, at first as Hinayanists of the Sar- 
vasti-vada, which affirms that " all exists." ^ Afterwards 

Paris, 1909, p. i89f. ; 29of. Nagarjuna's school founded some of the 
far-eastern sects. 

1 The truth between extremes is professed by the Middle Path 
of the Mahayana. Hinayana divides reaHty into phenomenal and 
noumenal (Nirvana) spheres, the phenomenal embracing physical 
and psychic, both physical and psychic phenomena having objective 
reality, but as impermanent (in flux). The noumenal sphere, 
though real, is void of phenomena. Radical Mahayana, on the 
other hand, denies the reality of the phenomenal world; the out- 
side world is mental illusion; even the self (of self-consciousness) 
has no real existence; of the noumenal world one can speak only 
by negations. Conservative Mahayana, however, regards this view 
as extreme. It asserts that the phenomenal world is real because 
it is one with the noumenal world. It manifests the noumenal (but 
has no distinct existence). The oneness of the Real {dharma of 
non-duality) is the only thing we know but it cannot be defined; 
whether being or not-being or a state between be existence, whether 
things are or are not or are neither, no one can know. 



BUDDHISM IN INDIA 201 

both brothers appear as Mahayanists. Vasubandhu, who 
is said to have been converted to the Mahayana in his old 
age by Asanga, commented on the Lotus and other texts. 
According to this school, the foundation of all psychic 
processes is Bodhi, absolute truth and saving wisdom, t)Ut 
this is attainable only for one who has practised Yoga 
through ten grades of exercises of mystic sort, like those 
practised by the Brahmanic Yogins.^ 

Such psychic hygienic exercises really aimed at getting 
Yoga-power and soon became mere magical practices, in 
which the Mahayana texts were used as magic formulas, 
Dharanis. This led straight to the Tantric cult, wherein 
Buddhistic saints mingled confusedly with Shivaite gods 
and goddesses, especially Tara, a goddess and " female 
form" of Avalokiteshvara (sixth century). The most im- 
portant Tantric exercises have to do with mystic dia- 
grams, syllables, hand-movements, and with magical rites 
on the eighth day of the half-months. This Tantra-yana or 
third school of Buddhism, is really nothing more than a 
combination of Shivaism, with its animism and magic, and 
Buddhistic names. It no more deserves to be called a 
school of Buddhism than does the combination of Yoga and 
deception, or ignorance, which today calls itself Esoteric 
Buddhism. But worse was still to come. 

For Buddhism unhappily did not die in its glory in India, 
but gradually became merged with forms of the Brahmanic 
faith, till little of the original belief was left in the west, 
while in the east and north it was perpetuated under new 
conditions, generally in a debased form. Yet even in the 
ninth and tenth centuries there were Buddhist kings and 
a Buddhist temple was built in 1276, while the restoration 
of the shrine at Bodh Gaya in 1331 shows that the old 
tradition of the faith still survived. As late as the six- 
teenth century Buddhism was still to be found in Bengal 
and Orissa. 

1 See the Sutralamkara (of Asanga) by Sylvain Levi, 2 vols., 
Paris. 1007-11. 



202 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

After the seventh century, however, the older Yogacara 
tended to become replaced by Mantra-yana, a school which 
substituted Mantras, religious formulas conceived in sym- 
bolic syllables, for the Dharanis. This in turn was suc- 
ceeded by the so-called Vajra-yana, a more mystic and sen- 
sual interpretation of the Mahayana. All is here conceived 
in materiahstic terms. The mind bent on Bodhi, saving wis- 
dom, falls into the embrace of the (female) Niratma Devi 
at the top of the formless (Arupa) heaven. This symbolic 
process was interpreted rather too literally by the lower 
classes and represents the third stage in intellectual descent 
(from Mahayana to the Dharanis, from these to the use of 
Mantras, and from these to the Vajra-yana). But a still 
lower form of Buddhistic religion was that called the Ve- 
hicle of the Wheel of Time, Kala-cakra-yana, which fol- 
lowed the Vajra-yana (though Nepalese Buddhism still re- 
mains mostly Vajra-yana). The Kala-cakra is the wheel of 
destructive Time, and this Vehicle is in sum nothing but 
demon-worship as a means of protection against destruc- 
tion. Buddha here becomes a mere demon. Another form 
of Buddhism (c. 900-1000 a. d.) in this decadent stage is 
that mixed with Brahmanism, the Nathamarga, a sort of 
Yoga-practice devoted to indrawing of breath and other 
spiritual exercises, directed, however, to winning success 
in this world rather than any spiritual gain. There was 
also at this time a carnal road to salvation practised by the 
lower classes of Buddhist and Brahmans called Sahaji- 
yas, sages still worshipped, and sacrificed to, in Thibet. 
Later Tantric worship, mainly of the Shakti or female ele- 
ment, was not recognized before the sixteenth century. It 
was designed chiefly for women and slaves, for the deities 
are said to "prefer low castes." This debauched religious 
type, introduced in the twelfth century, but gradually 
adopted by the upper classes, is supposed by some scholars 
to derive from Scythian sources; but it is quite explicable 
on India's own polluted soil, where any form of erotic 
mysticism has thriven for a thousand years. Modern Tan- 



BUDDHISM IN INDIA 203 

trism pretends to be literary and conceals its indecency 
under a thin garb of philosophy, palpably recent but pre- 
tending to be ancient. What is ancient is the cult of ero- 
ticism and inebriety ; what is recent is the philosophic frame- 
work, the exaltation of the female principle. 

In Tibet,^ where Buddhism was at home in the seventh 
century, although there was a form of Buddhism which 
was practically theistic, the worship of the " Original 
Buddha," yet on the whole the church was pervaded with 
gross superstition. Demonology rather than theology was 
the care even of the higher minds. This branch, possibly 
influenced by Nestorianism, had a ritual like that of the 
Christian church, a pope (Lama), bishops, clergy who 
officiated in cathedrals adorned with images and pictures, at 
services where incense and the tinkling bell reminded the 
first Christian missionaries of home — much to their horror, 
for they thought that the Devil had taught the Tibetans a 
mockery of Catholicism. These Lamaists are divided into 
two sects, distinguished by colours, red and yellow. 

Although, like all vigorous religious organizations. Bud- 
dhism split into (seventeen) heresies and (sixty-two) 
sects,^ even the great distinction between Little and Great 
Yanas has not broken it. In fact some of the literature, 
like the famous Questions of Milinda, a theological tract of 
the second century a. d., has remained common to both 
sections, and of course both are built upon a great body 
of common beliefs. In India Buddhism has disappeared, 
except as it is resuscitated today by missionaries, but we 
shall trace its growth and still living faith in the religions 
of China and Japan. 

1 The original Tibet religion was the Bon, which recognized 
spirits in all natural phenomena, irascible but placated by stones 
piled on a hill, and ghosts, placated (bribed) to keep away. But the 
only lasting ghosts were those of the earthly aristocrats. The priest 
was a Shaman, a magician, healer, banisher of evil spirits, and also a 
prophet. Much of this native religion still lingers in Lamaism. 

2 The 252 " heresies " of c. 252 b, c. were chiefly diflferences of 
opinion regarding unimportant practices. 



204 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

H. C. Warren, Buddhism in Translations. Cambridge, Mass., 

1896. 
Buddhist Texts, translated in Sacred Books of the East, x, xi, 

xiii, xvii, xx, xxi, xxxv-vi, xlix. 
Sayings of Buddha, J. H. Moore, Itivuttaka, New York, 1908. 
H. Kern, Manual of Indian Buddhism, Strassburg, 1896. 
H. Oldenberg, Buddha, 5th ed., Stuttgart, 1906. 
T. W. Rhys Davids, Buddhist India, New York, 1907; Indian 

Buddhism, Hibbert Lectures, London, 1891 ; Dialogues of 

the Buddha, 2 vols., London, 1899-1910. 
G. F. Moore, Metempsychosis, Cambridge, Mass., 1914. 
A. J. Edmunds, Hymns of the Faith, the Dhammapada, Chicago, 

1902; Buddhist and Christian Gospels, Philadelphia, 1908. 
L. de la Vallee Poussin, Buddhisme, Paris, 1909. 

D. T. Suzuki, Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism, London, 1907. 

E. B. Cowell, The latakas, Cambridge, 1895-1913. Six vol- 

umes of Birth-stories translated. 
W. Geiger, The Mahanuamsa, Ceylon Chronicle, London, 1912. 

This and the following volumes are published by the Pali 

Text Society. 
S. Z. Aung, Compendium of Philosophy, London, 1910. 
Mrs. C. A. F. Rhys Davids, Buddhist Psychology, 1914; 

Psalms of the Early Buddhists, 2 vols., 1908 and 1913. 

F. L, Woodward, Manual of a Mystic, London, 19 16. 
See also under the Religions of Japan. 



CHAPTER THIRTEEN 

HINDU SECTARIAN RELIGIONS 

The effort to establish triads of gods is the counterpart of 
the tendency to make the one god three-fold. In an early 
theosophical essay it is said that there are in reality only 
three deities, one of earth. Fire; one of the atmosphere, 
Wind or Indra ; and one " whose place is in the sky, dyu, 
and his name is Surya " (sun). It is the sun-god who 
" measures out the spaces " (compare Habakkuk iii. 6, " he 
stood and measured the earth"), under both the name of 
Surya and that of Vishnu. The oldest interpreters of the 
Veda understood Vishnu to be the sun-god or the three- 
fold god who appears as fire, lightning, and sun in three 
wide strides. His topmost step is also that " abode of 
honey " in the sky whither the worshipper hopes to go, the 
highest sphere which the stride itself established, and which 
he, the good "cowherd" (compare our use of shepherd) 
ever guards.^ A later mythology combines with this a story 
of Vishnu as a dwarf suddenly enlarging his size and in 
three strides encompassing earth ; but the traditional Hindu 
understanding of Vishnu down to the Bhagavad-gita is that 
Vishnu is the kindly sun-god and as such, rather than the 
war-god or than Shiva, he was worshipped by philosopher 
and agriculturist. The god of the lower classes, whom the 
orthodox priests identified with the lightning-god Rudra, 
was Shiva. A third great god was the personified Power 
Brahma, whom, to distinguish as (masculine) personal from 
the abstract (neuter) Power, we may call Brahman. He 
is identified with the old Father-god and was generally 

1 Compare the descriptions of Vishnu in Rig Veda I. 22, 90, and 
154 with the Nirukta, vii. 5. 

205 



206 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

recognized as the head of the orthodox Brahmanic pan- 
theon. So the early texts of the Buddhists regard him as 
the greatest god the Brahmans had. Very much later, 
probably not before 300 or 400 A. D., simply in order to 
unite the warring factions of the strictly orthodox Brahman- 
worshippers, the then sectarian Vishnu-worshippers, and 
the Shiva-worshippers, there was a formal union of these 
great gods as " three gods in one " or strictly " three forms,** 
tri-murti, as previously there had been an attempt to unite 
the two sectarian gods under a dual whole, as Vishnu- 
Shiva, or Hari-Hara. The Smartas or traditionalists 
(orthodox) have always looked askance but with enforced 
indulgence at these sects and have been ready to accept 
their followers provided they did not break too completely 
with the received religion, as the Brahmans* religious text- 
books provide offerings for the various spirits of the sec- 
tarian cults. 

Though in the Trimurti the three gods appear as Creator, 
Preserver, and Destroyer, each member of the triad had 
originally all these implied functions. Even Brahman, who 
as Creator is popularly supposed to have done his work at 
the beginning and ceased to be active, was a busy god till 
the first centuries of our era, protecting and destroying as 
well as creating. But he has finally dropped out of sight 
and in all India there are only two temples where he is the 
god. Shiva, the last of the triad, is a case of the first 
shall be last, for he is the first of the three to become an 
All-god. In contrast with kindly Vishnu, he represents the 
fearful power in nature ; he is god of robbers and thieves ; 
lord of cattle, for he slays them with his lightning; terri- 
ble, monstrous, but called shka, kind, euphemistically, yet 
really austere, hence the god of ascetics. He lives in ceme- 
teries, is adorned with skulls, garbed with snakes and ashes ; 
or again he madly dances on the mountain tops, the god 
whom the Greeks took to be Dionysos because of the orgias- 
tic traits in his character. Shiva is all one fears, yet a per- 
sonal transcendent god. Shivaism was acceptable to Bud- 



HINDU SECTARIAN RELIGIONS 20/ 

dhism, for both were closely connected with Sankhyan 
dualism. Shiva always remained a scholar's god, as because 
of his dancing he was the god of the dramatist, while his 
austerity alone would be enough to endear him to the phi- 
losopher, who made him an All-god. 

As a visible god Shiva bears a trident and rosary : ^ the 
crescent is on his brow ; he has three eyes, with one of which 
he consumed Kama, the god of love; and his wife is the 
Mountain-goddess, Uma, Parvati, called the terrible, and 
destructive mother. Kali, Durga, patroness of Thugs, a 
wild-tribe goddess, fitly associated with Shiva, who had in 
fact the same origin. In later literature, Shiva has the 
phallus, liugam, as sign of his productive powers; his ani- 
mals, boar and bull, probably represent this idea also. All 
the wild-tribes when civilized prefer Shiva, and the Brah- 
man priests see to it that the local demons of these tribes 
are enlisted as forms of this god, who, though he is repre- 
sented as having destroyed the orthodox cult, is still close 
to it, in preserving austerity and upholding animal sacrifice 
(both rejected by Vishnu-worshippers). One of the Shiva 
sects called Pashupat, cattle-lord-worshippers, was said to 
be " here and there opposed to the (orthodox) books," but 
the division is but metaphysical. The higher intellectual 
followers of Shiva are Shivaites only nominally, taking 
Shiva as a convenient name for their immanent-transcen- 
dental God. Shivaism struggled against Brahmanic con- 
trol rather than against Brahmanic belief. Like Buddhism, 
it ignored caste and dared to say that caste is of no impor- 
tance, for all men are children of one Father. 

Included as elements of Shivaism are the worship of his 
son, Skanda, the war-god, and that of the elephant-god, 
** lord of hosts," who makes and removes difficulties (Ga- 
nesha) ; the Mothers, too, hags of diseases especially adverse 
to children, represent another element drawn from the 

1 The rosary, common to Buddhism and Shivaism, was taken over 
by the Christian Church, whose missionaries brought it back from 
India. 



208 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Dravidian population. Brutal slaughter often marks Shiva*s 
cult and he appears in an equally rude female form, whose 
cult implies that of the Shakti or female power, which 
is found also in other sects but is most conspicuous in 
Shivaism and was destined to make the chief factor in the 
Tantric rites already mentioned. His devotees were often 
found among the Yogins, who studied mesmerism and 
occult power-winning long before the Christian era, and 
whose pretended powers have given them the name of 
Mahatmas. They aimed at imitating Shiva's austerities. 
Some, representing sects of the middle ages, still survive, 
Nail-men, whose nails grow till they pierce the palms ; Sky- 
facers, who hold their faces rigidly upward till unable to 
bend them back ; Up-arm men, who hold up their arms in 
the same way; Tree-men, who hang upside down in trees; 
Skull-men and Pot-men, who carry these symbols; and 
Lingins, who worshipped the phallus itself as Shiva (twelfth 
century). Most of these wretches nowadays have no idea 
what their attitudes and symbols mean ; all are intellectually 
degraded or mere fakirs. Some of the older sects show 
that Shivaism represented a higher thought. The Naku- 
lishas, tenth century and later, sought " nearness to God " 
through moral life and philosophy. About this time there 
was in Kashmir a sect called Recognitioners, who aimed at 
" recognizing God in the soul." It is only thus we can 
understand the statement that a philosopher like Shankara 
was a Shiva-worshipper. Even the basest of modern sects 
had originally an idea and a system behind the symbol, 
which has now become their all. 

The whole conception of Shiva reverts to a wild god of 
native tribes identified with Rudra, a lightning and disease- 
god of the Veda, wlio is also a mountain-cloud phenomenon, 
cruel and kindly by turns, and has many epithets, or forms 
as names, and to whom is made a bull-sacrifice. He is 
taken, this all-pervading terror, as the name of the All- 
god in his awful manifestations even in the Upanishads, 
though not till they began to name personally the ** great 



HINDU SECTARIAN RELIGIONS 209 

terror/* mahad bhayam, which the still earlier Upanishad- 
ists called the Brahma. Nor was he then a sectarian god. 
His phallus-cult is probably that deprecated in the Rig 
Veda as opposed to Aryan worship, that is, it belonged to 
un-Aryan inhabitants, as did the serpent-cult, afterwards 
adopted from these aborigines as part of the Shiva para- 
phernalia. He remained an adapted god of the Brahnians 
(not sectarian), till perhaps about the fourth century B.C., 
when his worshippers became exclusively Shivaites, thus 
beginning the sectarian worship of this god, whom they 
called Maheshvara, Great Lord, etc. By the sixth century 
A. D. there were Shiva sects in south India and by the ninth 
there were two schools of Shivaism in Kashmir. Probably 
most of the modern sects go back to about this period, 
though the elements of Shivaism are much more ancient. 
Thus the worship of Mothers, that of Ganesha, and of 
Skanda, were older separate cults, gradually amalgamated 
with that of Shiva. The Pashupat system of Shivaism 
probably began about 200 b. c. Shiva had no systematized 
Descents (Avatars). When he appeared on earth, he came 
as the great god, not in animal or human form, though 
occasionally, in imitation of Vishnu, his worshippers have 
invented Avatars for him also. His bull is regarded as a 
sacred animal, but not as the god in person. 

The worship of Vishnu, who bears the (sun-) discus, 
like that of Shiva, takes many forms. First he was re- 
vered as Lord, Ishvara, by philosophers who sought to 
make him representative of deistic doctrines. Then he was 
revered under the name Krishna or Vasudeva, a clan-god 
raised to all-god-hood, and later as Rama, another clan- 
god of the same sort.^ After he was recognized in a hu- 

1 These clan-gods may originally have been clan-men, later deified 
as heroes and regarded as local gods ; then as clan-gods raised to a 
par with the god of gods recognized by a more advanced com- 
munity. Heroes in India become divine, and divinities, almost as 
soon as they die, sometimes before. On the other hand, it is pos- 
sible that both Rama and Krishna were gods interpreted as men. 
The evidence for neither view is convincing. 



2IO THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

man form, the Brahman priests appear to have reasoned 
thus : " Krishna is a form of Vishnu ; what about other 
divine descents to earth? The fathers said that the Dwarf 
was Vishnu. They also said that a divine Fish rescued 
Manu ; they identified the Fish with Brahman, but we 
identify him with Vishnu." Then they added all the other 
condescensions of Vishnu as Descents, Avatars. These 
they gleaned from their mythological learning, such as the 
Avatar of the Boar, who (originally as Father-God) is said 
to have raised earth; or from later lore, such as the man- 
lion divinity, who tore an opponent to pieces, or the ancient 
Rama-warrior of the Bhrigu clan. Then on various occa- 
sions they added more, such as the spirit called the Swan or 
Goose, the sun-bird Garuda, the Tortoise, which bore earth 
on its back, and eventually Buddha and even a future 
Avatar, Kalkin. The list held at ten for a time, but the 
Puranas added ias many more, including the founder of the 
Jains as an Avatar. These make, as a group, Vishnu's third 
method of revealing himself to man, in forms under which 
he is worshipped. Also, to the religious person, the soul 
within, being one with the One God, is another form ; and, 
to the mass of people, the spirit in the idol is another. 

Krishna, called Vasudeva,^ is brother of Balarama San- 
karshana, a bucolic drunken " ploughman " god, much cele- 
brated in epic verse. In sundry early inscriptions and notices 
of gods this Sankarshana is regularly associated with Vasu- 
deva. Later, Krishna is credited with a son and grandson, 
Pradyumna and Aniruddha, of whom the earlier accounts 
have nothing to say, but whom the theologians adopt as 
metaphysical figures. The only early partner of Krishna 
is Sankarshana, the ploughman, his older brother.^ This 
Krishna is the object of a cult originally independent of 

* Originally Krishna is independent even of Vasudeva, who seems 
to have been another clan-god, belonging to the Vrishni clan, also 
exalted from human or hero estate to the position of god of gods. 
But Krishna appears as a Vasudeva-form in the Bhagavad-gita. 

2 In the later systems, these relatives represent activities of God. 
Thus Caitanya (below) explains Krishna Vasudeva as intelligence, 



HINDU SECTARIAN RELIGIONS 211 

Vishnu. He is dramatically represented as slaying his 
wicked uncle. He is, in fact, a local hero-god whose cult 
expanded till he was received into good society and identi- 
fied with a Vedic sage of the same name referred to in the 
Upanishads. After the Bhagavad-gita, " the New Testa- 
ment of India" (c. 300-400 B.C.), he was also identified 
with the Brahmanic highest spirit called Narayana, a name 
in Manu's law-book of Brahman, who in turn was identi- 
fied with Vishnu: The earliest religious system of the 
Vasudeva-Krishna cult is monotheistic ; the god is " god of 
gods " and the object of special devotion, bhakti. The cult 
of the four forms or manifestations comes later and is 
found in the (Vishnu) Pancaratra system, assigned by some 
scholars to the third century b. c, but probably considerably 
later. The Bhagavad-gita does not yet recognize the iden- 
tity of Krishna with \^ishnu as All-god, only with Vishnu 
as sun-god, nor with the four forms of the Pancaratra 
system. It recognizes Krishna as the One God, who loves 
man and whose grace gives salvation. Knowledge and 
works are not considered altogether vain, but they are depre- 
cated. Faith alone suffices to save. *' Give up works ; medi- 
tate upon me ; then am I your saviour ; I save those who set 
their hearts on me; through my grace are they saved. 
They that love me, they are in me and I in them. I am 
the father, the mother, the Way (of salvation), the only 
Lord and refuge. Even those who worship other gods with 
faith and love are really worshipping me alone. He who 
gives to me even a flower or water, from him I accept it 
as a gift of love and sufficient sacrifice. Whatsoever thou 
doest, oflFerest, or eatest, do it as a sacrifice to me, for I, 
Krishna, am God." 

Because Vishnu as the sun-god is the topmost god, whose 
place is like an eye in the sky, and because his loftiest place 
is the abode of bliss, and represents the highest, purest, 

Sankarshana as consciousness, Pradyumna as love, and Aniruddha 
as sportiveness ; older systems interpret Pradyumna as mind and 
Aniruddha as consciousness. 



212 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

divinity, he rises steadily in esteem from the Vedic to the 
Puranic age, a favourite with the mystic philosopher as with 
those who preferred the gentle cult of the sun-god to the 
wild-abuses of Shiva. In the later epic, the identity of 
Vasudeva-Krishna with Vishnu is fully established, al- 
though in this same epic there are several passages which 
show that there was still strong antagonism against the 
ascription of supreme godhead to Vasudeva. He was not 
yet universally recognized, but was still inore or less of a 
local god, though strenuously demanding for himself the 
status of God. 

There was, however, another Krishna with whom the 
saint of the Veda had to divide honours. This was the 
cowherd Krishna,^ whose chief reputation was that of an 
amorous swain of cowherds, delight of the maidens, whom 
he chases and woos by the dozen. He was a musical, 
prank-playing, dancing boy-god, unknown to the Bhagavad- 
gita, but recognized in later parts of the epic as identical 
with Krishna- Vasudeva. Nothing more incongruous can 
be imagined than this union. A sort of Pan, playing his 
pipes and chasing girls, is now the majestic All-god called 
Vasudeva-Krishna-Vishnu. The easiest explanation is that 
two forms of Krishna have united, one the warrior god, 
whose glory was attached to the clan-god of the western 
Vrishnis, and the other the local Mathura cowherds* god, 
of whom as a child one told marvellous feats and as a 
youth humorous pranks. His clan is supposed by Professor 
Bhandarkar to have been that of the Abhiras. The cultus 
is directed to him as the lover-god and this is what has made 
Krishna-worship popular among the sentimental religionists 
of India from the time of the Gita Govinda in the twelfth 
century. Identified with that of Vasudcva-\'islinu, this cult 
regards him formally as vSupreme Spirit : but the whole tone 
of such later sects is that of mystic eroticism centred about 
Krishna as the lover-god. 

1 This is the Gokula Krishna, whose cult probably arose shortly 
before the Christian era and was brahmani/ed soon after that era. 



HINDU SECTARIAN RELIGIONS 213 

A third phase of the cult appears still later in the special 
worship of the infant Krishna with the Madonna, possibly 
a loan from Christianity due to the identification of Krishna 
and Christ. Krishna is called Kushto and Krishto in some 
of the northern dialects.^ Such are the forms of Vishnu 
the sun-god as All-god on earth. At the same time there 
arose an independent growth of sun-worshippers, probably 
fostered by Persian influence, so that in the ninth century 
of our era there were no less than six sub-sects of Sauras 
(sun-worshippers), as there were six devoted to Ganesha, 
an indication of the rapid growth of devotees of all kinds 
at this period, who worshipped gods still distinct. 

The essentially monotheistic Vishnu-religion played a 
very important part in combating the influence of Shankara 
(born 788 A. D.), who had established monistic idealism and 
taught that life was a dream in a world of illusion. Some 
time after Vasudeva-Krishna had been identified with 
Vishnu the same process raised Rama, the western hero or 
godlmg. to a similar position. The identification of Rama 
with Vishnu is perhaps as old as the first centuries of the 
Christian era; but there is no cult of him before the tenth 
or eleventh century. Ramanuja, in the beginning of the 
eleventh century, founded a South Indian church which 
while tounded upon the \' edanta philosophy, held a differ- 
ent interpretation from that of Shankara. To Ramanuja, 
the world and soul are parts or attributes of God ; the world 
in short, IS not illusive but real. This is the true Upanishad 
doctrine, of which the illusion-doctrine is a later phase • it 
IS a montheism as well as a pantheism. God is eternal^ free 
of all defects. He pervades the universe; he is creator 
preserver, destroyer. He is, however, incorporate in va- 
rious manifestations, the Avatars of \^ishnu, but He may 
be recognized as the one within the heart. This god one 
must worship with bhakti, that is, yoga or devout medita- 

inhamlarkar ra»V/,/(;r,>,„, Saivism, etc.. Strassburg, IQ13, p 
^ \J\\ ^i^l ^ -^ century a. d.. Manichaeism and Mithraism^ and 
probably Christian teaching had already penetrated to India 



214 THE HISTORY OV RELIGIONS 

tion.* 1 his church divided into two sects, one holding that 
God first extended His grace to save, as a cat seizes its 
kitten ; the other, that man must first seek to be saved, as 
a young monkey must first embrace its mother's neck to 
be carried to safety. Hence these sects, still vigorous in 
South India, are known as the Cat and the Monkey sects. 
They are to the Ramanuja church what Augustinian and 
Pelagian doctrines were to the Roman Church, The I*ashu- 
pats among the Shivaites hold to the cat-theology ; but most 
of the Shiva-sects are adherents of the monkey-doctrine. 
Despite Ramanuja's name, he seems to have been a wor- 
shipper of Krishna as a form of Vishnu. His follower 
Ramanand, however, favoured Rama (fourteenth century). 
His V'ishnuism was a monotheism, opposed to eroticism; he 
also preached against caste-distinctions. Kabir (died 1518), 
of Ramanand's sect, and Dadu (circa 1600) spread the 
cult of Rama as name of God through northern India, espe- 
cially among the lower classes, to which they belonged. 
Tulsidas about the same time (he was born in 1532) fur- 
ther popularized this Rama-monotheism through the medium 
of poetry in the vernacular. All these sects were virtually 
monotheistic and ignored the grosser sentimental-sensuous 
aspects of Vishnuism. A reform of Ramanuja's church 
introduced by Madhva (1200-1275) in southern and middle 
India had, however, introduced an element of weakness 
in stressing the " love " element. Madhva taught that the 
individual soul was different from Brahma and that the 
grace of God was won by sympathetic appreciation of God's 
character. But, to attain this, one must yearn for God, ap- 
parently a safe tenet, but not for Hindus. He who yearns 
for God in India soon loses his head as well as his heart. 
Madhva worshipped both Krishna and Rama as forms of 
\'ishnu, the name of God, and from this time on the special 
Bhagavat worship (of Vishnu as Krishna) declined in fa- 
vour of a more catholic Vishnuism ; but the poetry of this 

1 Ramanuja expressly defines bhakti as upasana and as yoga. He 
nowhere teaches *' love " in the usual Krishnaite sense. 



HINDU SECTARIAN RELIGIONS 215 

period shows a mystic love of God indistinguishable from the 
gross sensuoiisness which has been the bane of the Krishna- 
cult since the day of the amorous Cowherd. Thus, in the 
twelfth century. Ximbarka showed a strong predilection for 
the united worship of Krishna and his mistress Radha, which 
led directly to the excess of the Radha-cuh as taught in 
the sixteenth century by Vallabha in western India, vir- 
tually the worship of the lover-god Krishna and of Radha, 
the aim of the devotee being to go after death to a vulgar 
heaven of sensual delights. In this cult comes out strongly 
the theory, also an early Christian idea, that the spiritual 
guide of the sect, the Guru, represents God. He is divine 
to the Hindu devotee and must be served with degrading 
personal attendance ; he owns the devotee and the devotee's 
property. 

Somewhat better was the contemporary religion of Cai- 
tanya of Bengal, who indeed stressed unduly the amorous 
element in the worship of Krishna,' but he also preached 
a spiritual devotion and opposed the caste-system. Utterly 
opposed to the growing tendency of erotic religion, Namdcv, 
in the fourteenth century, discarded the cult of Radha, 
deprecated formalism and preached purity (love of a |)ure 
heart for a pure God) to the western Mahrattas. The 
Sikhs have . incorporated in their Granth (bible) some of 
Namdev's hymns. The Mohammedans taught him to de- 
spise idols, which were used even by Ramanuja. In the 
seventeenth century, Tukaram, a devout slave-caste teacher, 
followed Xamdev. The seeming catholicity as to caste of 
several of these religious leaders is due to their low origin 
as much as to their contact with Mohammedanism. Kabir, 
the forerunner of the Sikhs, was a bastard son of a Brahman 
woman brought up by a Mohammedan. Dadu was a cot- 

1 It has been observed by many scholars that, as a rule, the Rama- 
sects are purer-minded than the Krishna-sects. A Raniaite re- 
gards the love of God as that of a father for his son ; a Krishnaite 
as that of a lover for his mistress. But the early Krishnaism of 
the Bhagavad-gita was not of this debased type; there God loves, 
but is not amorous. 



2l6 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

ton-cleaner; Sena, a follower of Ramanand, was a barber; 
Namdev was a tailor, etc. 

In all these Vishnuite sects there is a strong reaction 
against the practical atheism of Vedantic monism. Be- 
ginning with Ramanuja, this struggle persisted down to the 
sects which are half- Mohammedan. It started, however, 
long before the formal attack of Ramanuja on his philo- 
sophic predecessor, for the Narayana and Vasudeva (Bha- 
gavat) cults were essentially monotheistic, not monistic. 
They continue that God-idea which in the Upanishads them- 
selves converts the holy terror of nameless Power into a 
God of grace. It is this tendency which led in the mid- 
dle ages to the deistic sects like that of the Sittars (Blessed), 
believers in a pure life and one God. They and even Rama- 
nuja have been suspected of borrowing from Christianity. 
But it is not necessary to assume any loan to explain Hindu 
monotheism.^ All that the historian may say is that such a 
loan is not at all impossible. 

If there has been any loan from Christianity, it is to be 
found in the mediaeval sects worshipping a Lord regarded 
as a God of love ; yet it is quite possible to derive this idea 
also from native sources. Its mediaeval expression is 
perhaps enhanced by, rather than drawn from, Christian 
missionaries. At the same time, the close approach to 
Christian expression even in the Bhagavad-gita lends col- 
our to the theory that some later re-writer may have inten- 
sified the faith-doctrine there advanced. Yet, in connexion 
with this, it must be remembered that Buddha had already 
become an object of loving personal devotion and perhaps the 
influence of the Buddhist faith and love of the master, who 
in the Mahayana system is also a saviour, was not an unim- 
portant factor in the creation of the Gita as a counterblast 

1 The belief in many " gods " does not impugn Hindu monotheism, 
since, when the God-idea occurs, the gods appear only as inferior 
spirits. Christians also used to believe in various spirits, angels, 
devils, etc., as consorting with or opposed to God. These are the 
devas and the demons of the Hindu monotheist. 



HINDU SECTARIAN RELIGIONS 217 

to the personal religion of the then dominant religious 
party.* 

Vishnuism includes also a Shakti cult (above) as that of 
divine energy in Mother-form, so that it has a sort of 
trinity of god-powers, God as All-soul, God as incarnate in 
man (Krishna or Rama), and God as the energizing pro- 
ductive power in the world; with which last Sir George 
Grierson aptly compares the substitution by Syrian Chris- 
tians of Mary for the third person of the Christian trin- 
ity.* 

The Puranas, to which reference has already been made, 
are a store of mythology and ritualism emanating from the 
early and mediaeval centuries. Although historically of 
some inferential importance and mythologically of the great- 
est interest, their religious value is not so great as one 
would expect. It is confined to the details of ritual, which 
of course has its own worth but only when it embodies an 
idea. The only idea in all the Puranic ritual is that the 
god worshipped is in an idol ; this idol is to be washed 
and dressed, put to sleep and waked up, prayed to and 

1 The epic in which the Bhagavad-gita is enshrined is a work of 
centuries, which has caught up some extraneous matter from Persia 
and probably some Christian material is embedded in it. Even 
Professor Garbe but lately believed that its most monotheistic sec- 
tion is an echo of Christian belief (Archiv fiir Religions-zvLsscn- 
schaft, xvi, 546). The more the present writer studies the sub- 
ject the more is he convinced of the probability of early borrowing 
on the part of India and the improbability of any one ever knowing 
how much borrowing there has been. India is a sponge that soaks 
up all ideas and cults. It borrowed freely from the native aborig- 
ines ; it absorbed the border-land beliefs; it took to itself Greek 
astronomy and perhaps Greek drama ; and it would not be surpris- 
ing if it had drawn something from a religion brought to its doors by 
mis>ionaries in the first centuries of our era. Its texts are plastic. 
There is not an early Brahman or Buddhist epic or religious poem 
(after the Vedic age) which has not been re- and re-written, with 
any number of changes, interpolations, and additions. Moreover, 
most of these religious texts are dateless ; we congratulate ourselves 
if we can approximate to within two or three centuries of the time 
when they were composed. Nevertheless, probability is not proof. 

2 Journ. Royal Asiatic Society, 1907. 



2l8 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

fed, and glorified as the very image of the divine.^ Each 
Purana has its own god ; some are in honour of Shiva ; 
some extol Vishnu ; a few celebrate other gods. More- 
over the ritual is not the same in all; but it might as 
well be so, for all the ideas one can extract from the texts. 
The Puranas in general are a sort of resume of idolatry- 
lore based on a polytheistic sectarianism which reverts to 
the ancient henotheism of India: for the devotee, only this 
god now worshipped is of moment. At the same time, they 
contain references to the old fiends, devils, gods, and tales 
garnered from antiquity, which show that these are still 
the object of fear and wonder; but even these are chiefly re- 
flections from epic tradition, though a few new figures ap- 
pear. In general, the eighteen Puranas, from circa 300 to 
1300 A. D., may be dismissed from a history of religions with 
the remark that they are an early literary (save the mark) 
expression of what may be seen today in the various sectarian 
temples at Benares, where a horde of shrieking priests 
drum up a rich living by showing the credulous a god-doll. 
This religious phase is the nearest approach to shamanism 

1 Compare, for example, Agni Purana, Ivi, f., on installing an idol : 
*'This image embodies the Supreme Spirit; its pedestal is the god- 
dess ; the ceremony symbolizes the productive union of the two 
(as man and wife). . . . Bathe the image with hot water in pitchers 
of clay from holy ground . . . bathe the Supreme God with con- 
secrated water and scrub him with consecrated earth ; pour over him 
the washings of grain ; say the magic words ; wave lights and flags 
before him ; read the texts to him ; spikenard and myrobolan on his 
head; eighty-one pitchers (of water) pour upon his head and an- 
noint the god with sandal-paste . . . rub his body till he glows; 
offer him perfumes and song ; give him flowers and rich robes ; 
wave incense before him; put collyrium upon his eyelids; a mirror 
shall he have and over his head an umbrella ; fans wave before him. 
. . . The priest shall say, * Oh best of gods, be pleased to go a jour- 
ney.* Then decorate the platform ; place the god on the mystic 
diagram called swastika; make the god enter the image with the 
(designated) spells; anoint the image with butter; put a mirror 
before it; worship the image with songs, music, flowers, perfumes, 
chowries, and lamps; place saff'ron and turmeric on its head; take it 
to the river, bathe it along with priests and the best people ; take 
it out of the water, worship it again, bring it back to the temple . . . 
then celebrate the nuptials of the god and his spouse. . . ." 



HINDU SECTARIAN RELIGIONS 219 

and fetishism to be found in what is supposed to be a civil- 
ized community. It has no real support in the Hindu's own 
higher rehgion ; for the pity of it is that it is not a primi- 
tive form but a degradation. It represents decadence, the 
substitution of sound and emotion for sense and sanity. 

Native rehgions that have been influenced by Persian, 
Christian, and Mohammedan beHefs cannot be regarded as 
strictly Hindu. Nanak, a follower of Kabir, who himself 
was more Mohammedan than Hindu, was born in 1469 and 
created the famous church militant of the ** Lions of the 
Punjab," known as Sikhs, which reflected various religious 
elements and foreshadowed those modern reforms which 
are more political than pietistic. The Sikh cult of Sword 
and Book (Granth) built up a new political party, but its 
religion was a farrago of old ideas. Nanak had been in 
Arabia and borrowed from the Mohammedans his hatred 
of idolatry and his teaching of monotheism, God being wor- 
shipped under the Holy Name. He retained, however, a 
strong sub-stratum of Hindu pantheism and the Sikh wor- 
ship of the Guru (spiritual leader) was as pronounced as in 
the Hindu sects. A large number of these, often sub-sects, 
inaugurated by some ignorant pretender with more piety 
than education, has now for many years agitated the popu- 
lation of northern India. 

The so-called Reforming Sects of the last century are 
generally of a higher type, though they are all hybrid re- 
ligions formed of a mixture of native and foreign beliefs. 
The first was the deistic sect of Ram Mohun Roy (1772- 
1833), called the (Adi) Brahma Samaj or Religious Congre- 
gation, a conservative Bengal reform, afterwards liberal- 
ized by Debendranath Tagore, till, like all other Hindu 
sects, multiplying by scission, under the leadership of Ke- 
shub Chunder Sen, a radical enthusiast of great sincerity 
but of intemperate mind, it split into two divisions, the new 
church calling itself the Brahma Samaj of India (1866). 
The next year another (Prarthana) Samaj on the general 
lines of the Adi (First Congregation) was started inde- 



220 THE HISTORY OF REUGIONS 

pendently in western India. Sen's sect objected to caste 
and child-marriage ; it was from the beginning more a social 
than a religious reform ; but it adopted the theatrical meth- 
ods of Caitanya (to which it was related) and Sen him- 
self oflfended his followers by permitting, for political rea- 
sons, child-marriage in his own family. He came to be- 
lieve with his devotees that he was half divine; he pro- 
fessed himself a demi-Christian, and died a demi-Buddhist 
(invoking " the mother of Buddha "). Displeased with the 
love-feasts and other paraphernalia of emotionalism prac- 
tised by this Samaj, the sober members revolted (1878-84) 
and formed the General Congregation (Sadharana), which 
teaches the fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man, 
and insists that true worship is to love God and do His 
will.^ A curious but important Samaj is that inaugurated 
by Dayananda and known as the Arya Samaj. It appears 
to have started under the influence of the Bengal Adi Samaj 
as a western branch, beginning its activities in Bombay 
(1875) and Lahore (1877), and was for a time in rapport 
with the Theosophical Society. But Dayananda (1824- 
83) was an independent, who is to be credited with the move- 
ment originally leading to the Samaj. The Arya Samaj 
labours under the burden of upholding the Vedas, not only 
as inspired but as inculcating monotheism. It believes iri 
metempsychosis also and is divided into two sects called 
the Carnivora and Herbivora, according as its members eat 
meat and are liberal or, because Dayananda was a vege- 
tarian, eat only vegetables, a sign that the leader is becoming 
a divine authority. The Samaj as a whole, however, is a 
party quite as much as a church, and with its slogan, " India 
for the Indians," bids fair to become mainly a political 
body. It is " patriotic " in denouncing both British rule 
and Christianity and intensely conservative in upholding the 

1 There is also a Sadharana Dharma or General Religion (not 
connected with the Samaj), embodying a reactionary movement 
against reform. Many other local Dharmas are now organized to 
defend the old faith. 



HINDU SECTARIAN RELIGIONS 221 

barbarous laws of antiquity; but in its abhorrence of idol- 
atry, its demolition of the spiritual prestige of the Brahman 
priests, and in its educational work it deserves all praise. 
Another reformer called Shiva Narayana, though not the 
founder of a Samaj, has laboured in Calcutta and among 
the Assam tribes as a missionary, and has done good work 
in teaching a purer religion combining Christian and ** re- 
formed " Hindu ideas. 

For India, a return to the teaching of antiquity, in so far 
as it discards the priests* yoke, idolatry, and the sensual 
side of Hinduism, is a consummation devoutly to be wished. 
The great danger in the sects is that the Hindu tendency 
to deification is liable to spend itself in worship worse than 
that which the reformer would extirpate. Even the Mo- 
hammedans, who, like the Parsees, have reform movements, 
are not free from this abuse. ^ Among the Hindus, the 
now popular Radha Soamis, who prate of science and 
combine into a " religion " a jargon of chemistry and mys- 
ticism, are a moral but unintelligent religious body founded 
by a music-master who discovered in 1861 that he was God 
incarnate. The Deva Samaj is a body of professed atheists 
who worship only their pope, as incarnate spirituality. 
From such sects with their bizarre teaching no religious 
gain can be expected. The theopoetic mind of India deifies 
men without hesitation and if a man be unbalanced, as 
are many of the sectarian leaders, the religion of his fol- 
lowers becomes mere blasphemy. In America men of this 
sort are kept in insane asylums, where they can act God 
among other lunatics. In India they found a church and 
become the heads of religious organizations. 

Other reformers of note in the West but without churches 
of their own are Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. The 
former, whose words influenced Sen and Vivekananda more 

1 A Mohammedan " reformer," wlio. to his own satisfaction, has 
united Islam and Hinduism with Christianity, speaks of himself as 
very God, the Holy Ghost, etc., and suggests that he should act as 
pope of the universal religion which he has invented. 



222 THE HISTORY OF REUGIONS 

or less, was the type of an ancient mystic. An ignorant 
old man, but of immense personal magnetism, his devotion 
to God as '* Mother " and his undoubted, if rather hysterical, 
piety made him one of the most conspicuous figures in the 
religious life of northern India. Vivekananda was a poli- 
tician rather than a devotee. Pie popularized the cult of 
Hindus in America and brought back to India a reputation 
made abroad. 

The peculiar fact about most modern Hindu reforms is 
that they preach as a new doctrine of startling significance 
what has been taught for many centuries, not only in other 
lands but in India itself. We must remember, however, 
that monotheism, love of God, and a decent life are quite 
new to the ignorant natives, who for the most part have 
always been polytheists and have led lives contaminated 
by the gross moral abuses of polytheism. For, despite all 
the religious leaders since the Upanishads, the mass of the 
Hindus have worshipped every sort of god except God, and, 
despite unimpeachable ethical codes, they have been forced 
into immorality by their own priests. There is today no 
viler caricature of a man of God than the temple-priest of 
India and the more the Reform Samajas can do to lessen 
his influence the sooner will come the day when moral 
religion will take the place of superstitious debauchery. 
It is the ignorant priests who uphold the wild sectarian 
superstitions of the Puranas, against which Dayananda made 
his ineffectual onslaught. India owes them nothing but 
contempt. Her salvation, like that of Israel and of Eu- 
rope, has always lain with those who could think and 
see, her poets, philosophers, and inspired prophets. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Sir Monier-Williams, Indian lyisdom, London, 1876 and 1893; 
Brahmanism and Hinduism, London, 1891. 

A. C. Lyall, Asiatic Studies, London, 1899. 

J. C. Oman, Cults, Customs, and Superstitions of India, Lon- 
don. 1908; The Brahmans, Theists, and Muslims of India, 
London, 1907. 



HINDU SECTARIAN RELIGIONS 223 

M. Max Miiller, The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, New 

York, 1899. 
Paul Deussen, Das System des Vedanta, Leipzig, 1883-1906. 
Richard Garble, Die Samkhya Philosophie, Leipzig, 1894; The 

Bhagavad Gita, Leipzig, 1905. 
J. H. Woods, The Yoga System of Patanjali, Cambridge, Mass., 

1913. 
R. W. Frazer, Indian Thought Past and Present, New York, 

1915. 
Sir R. G. Bhandarkar, Vaishnavism, Saivism, etc., in Grundriss 

der Indo-arischen Philologie, 1913. 
Charles Johnston, Bhagavad Gita, New York, 1908; translated 

also, together with other epic texts, in Sacred Books of the 

East, viii. 
Sir G. A. Grierson, Bhakti-Marga, in Encyclopedia of Religion 

and Ethics. 
E. W. Hopkins, Epic Mythology, in Grundriss der Indo-arischen 

Philologie, 19 15. 
M. A. Macaulifife, The Sikh Religion, six vols., Oxford, 1909. 
J. N: Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements in India, New 

York, 1915, The Crown of Hinduism, London, 1915. 
Lajput Rai, Arya Samaj, London, 1915. 
See also under Chapters eleven and twelve. 



CHAPTER FOURTEEN 

RELIGIONS OF CHINA I 
PRE-CONFUCIAN RELIGION 

Our knowledge of the oldest Chinese culture and religion, 
sometimes called Sinism, to distinguish it from the mixture 
of Sinism, Taoism, and Buddhism, which combine to pro- 
duce the later religion, is drawn entirely from native works, 
the most important of which purport to be those collected 
by Confucius, the great diadochos of the sixth century b. c., 
who transmitted the literary treasures of antiquity. Later 
scholars of his school added a few notable books. These 
altogether make the five Canons, King, and four Classics, 
Shu, of Chinese religion as officially recognized for the 
last two thousand years. The first division, called the Wu- 
King, Five Canons, contains the Yih-King, Permutations, 
lines of uncertain date, origin, and meaning, traditionally 
regarded as embodying a profound philosophy; the Shu- 
King, History, traditional lore decked out with apocryphal 
declamation ; the Shi-King, Poetry, a collection of old songs 
and odes; part of the (later) Li-Ki, ritual law and cere- 
monies; and the Ch'un-Ts'iu, Spring and Autumn (Annals) 
of the district of Lu (from 722 to 494 or 481 B.C.), this 
being the only work composed by Confucius himself. The 
second division, called the Shu or Classics, consists of four 
works composed by disciples and followers of Confucius, 
the Lun-Yii, Logia (Analecta) of the master reported by 
later writers; the Tahioh, Great Learning; the Chung- Yung, 
a treatise on the mean (equilibrium and harmony of mind), 
inculcating right for right's sake; and the seven chapters 
of Mencius (Mang-tse), a follower of Confucius in the 

224 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA I 225 

fourth century b. c. There is also a canon, called Hiao- 
King/ on filial piety ascribed to Tse-Yu, one of the imme- 
diate disciples of Confucius. 

Thus the history of Chinese religion is not supported by 
" unchallengeable monuments," like those of Egypt. The 
Shu-King itself was compiled by scholars whose account 
is a mixture of tradition and invention arranged in order 
to produce a desired impression. A good deal of this is 
religious history, which is, as has been said of Chinese 
history in general, " nothing more than prehistoric lore in- 
vented by generations much later than the events them- 
selves." ^ To the category of invention belong not only the 
accounts of the " heavenly emperors," when the Chinese 
lived in a moral and material paradise, but also the data re- 
garding the succeeding fabulous emperors, including Fu-hi, 
whose date is given as 2953-2838 or 2852-2738 b. c, a 
supernatural person, half human half serpent, son of the 
Chinese Prometheus. It is said that he was born in the 
northwest of (modern) China, which was the seat of the 
earliest civilization, and this is the one historical fact of 
importance concerning him. Fu-hi is the first of a list of 
mythical emperors to whom are attributed various advances 
in religion and civilization. He himself is said to have in- 
stituted marriage, hitherto unknown; to have invented the 
eight original diagrams of the Yih-King; and to have been 
the first to introduce sacrifice to his god. After him Shen- 
Nung, an ox-headed half-human emperor, invented agricul- 
tural implements and discovered the medicinal properties 
of plants. This beneficent ruler was followed by the famous 
" Yellow Emperor," Huang-ti (2704-2595 b. c. ; or, accord- 
ing to the Annals of the Bamboo Books, his reign began in 
2491 b. c), who enlarged the empire by driving away the 

1 The text of the Tahloh and Chun- Yung is contained in the Li- 
Ki, only part of which is reckoned as a King (Canon). 

2 Hirth, The Ancient History of China, New York, 1908. The 
Chinese scholars themselves suspected the value of their historical 
books. One of them said, " Better to have no historical books than 
to give entire credence to them." 



226 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

northern barbarians, perhaps Huns, and by extending his 
sway to the south as well as to the east and west. The first 
temples are ascribed to him; he regulated the calendar and 
laid the foundation of the sacrificial cult, besides paying 
attention to astrology, etc. After an interval, during which 
" heresy arose and was suppressed," two ideal emperors 
called Yau and Shun (2357 to 2206 b. c), appeared as em- 
bodiments of all the virtues. Their follower Yii, whose 
deeds are recorded in the Shu-King, was the first emperor 
of the Hia dynasty, which lasted till a very wicked emperor 
called Kieh (Kie), (1818-1766 b. c.) brought it to a logical 
close. The history of these emperors is clearly composed 
for moral effect. As this Kieh's reign of sin effected the 
loss of the realm, so, conversely, the new dynasty, called 
Shang or Yin, which lasted from 1766 to 1122, because 
it began by being virtuous, enjoyed at first the favour of 
Heaven. The early history of the Shu-King consists largely 
in moral speeches directed to showing the proper path for 
kings and ministers and people to walk in; but there is no 
reason to suppose that any one of them is authentic, and 
even in regard to the times when these emperors lived, it 
is not probable that anything except names and generations 
can be trusted, till a period which happens to be fixed by 
astronomical data. This means, in reality, that there is 
no credible history before the eighth century b. c. and that 
till the sixth century very little is to be relied upon. The 
first real date in Chinese history is ']'j6 b. c, which happens 
to coincide with that of the first Olympiad.^ Most of the 
works indubitably authentic, dating from the sixth century, 
were burned in a later age and what we have now are books 
supposed to be identical with these but which suffered 

1 There is little reason to suppose that the cultural development 
of China was influenced in particular by contact with Babylon in 
the third millennium B.C., as has been urged by Lacouperie, in his 
Western Origin of the Early Chinese Civilization, London, 1894. 
Professor Hirth says that " his (Lacouperie's) arguments seem to 
be doomed to share the fate of De Guiness' attempt [in 1758] to 
prove that the Chinese had grown out of an Egyptian colony." 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA I 227 

restoration as well as burning. They were edited by schol- 
ars who filled in lacunae and freely reconstructed the text 
of the classic " King" (canons), so that we cannot actually 
be certain of the antiquity of any particular passage in 
them, unless of course its data be supported by other evi- 
dence. But the later writers even interpret the text as we 
have it in favour of their own theological views, however 
impossible such interpretation seems to be.^ It is obvious, 
therefore, that texts incapable of meeting their sanction may 
well have been suppressed altogether by the same devout 
editors. The sacred books were burned by royal edict in 
213 B. c. with the exception of the Yih-King, which, as a 
book of divination, was universally esteemed at that time. 
After the burning of Confucian books and the murder of 
those professing their doctrines ^ there was a considerable 
interval in which such copies as survived at all moulded 
away, till under the Han dynasty (206 b. C.-220 a. d.) the 
previous edict was repealed. Then (191 B.C.) the old 
books were restored, partly from memory and partly from 
such copies as had survived. The best scholars edited 
these; but, as even Professor Legge admits, these Han 
scholars may have put their own ideas into Confucius's 
mouth and they may have made additions to the writings 
supposed to have come from his immediate disciples.^ 

1 Probably antique morality as depicted is coloured in the same 
way. For example, the Shang dynasty, above, showed a (Budd- 
histic) " benevolence toward all animals," which was ascribed to 
them probably after Buddhism's entry into China. 

2 The auto-da-fe was purely a political matter, the Ts'in emperor 
believing that the classics injured his cause. Four hundred and 
sixty scholars, who persisted in disobedience to his edict, were buried 
alive. 

3 Sacred Books of the East, vol. iii, p. xix. Professor S. Wells 
Williams says that even native scholars question the validity of the 
ancient histories : ** Many of the Chinese literati believe that not a 
perfect copy of the classical works escaped destruction, and the 
texts were only recovered by rewriting them from the memories of 
old scholars. . . . Not only were many works entirely destroyed, but 
a shade of doubt thereby thrown over the accuracy of others." 
{History of China, re-edited, New York, 1901, p. 27.) 



228 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

The first form of Chinese reHgion must then be gathered 
from the earHest works we possess in their present shape. 
The reHgion thus reconstructed appears not in a philosoph- 
ical but in a popular manifestation. The religious belief 
which formulates the underlying reasoned base of the re- 
ligion is a later product; early are the vulgar beliefs and 
the ceremonies established upon these beliefs before there 
was any interpretation of the universe. From preconceived 
notions regarding the race and religion of the Chinese in 
their original habitat, we shall do well to hold aloof in 
interpreting their beliefs. There is no cogent reason for 
supposing that the Chinese were not inhabitants of China 
for generations before we know anything of them. 

The form of religion revealed in the earliest monuments 
is chiefly animistic. Spirits, identified with or dwelling in 
natural phenomena such as mountains, rivers, and clouds 
are worshipped; but ghost-worship, in the restricted appli- 
cation to ancestral ghosts, is more universal and, with one 
exception, seems to be more antique. These ghosts ap- 
pear to control the spirits of natural phenomena, and are 
the main spiritual powers to which appeal is made. But 
supreme over all powers, even the ancestor-ghost of the 
emperor, is the sky-power, sometimes conceived as natural 
phenomenon, sometimes as a spirit in phenomenon; in 
whose person as Supreme Power animism and naturism 
unite. The worship of this Supreme Power is in the earlier 
literature indissolubly united on the one hand with its com- 
plementary worship of Earth and on the other with that of 
other ancestors. Heaven and Earth are the great parents 
of all; but the emperor is especially designated as Son of 
Heaven, originally not so arrogant a title as it seems today, 
nor even as Homer uses the same words of any " heaven- 
born king," 8toyevr/s ^amXev^, but one indicating that Heaven 
regards the emperor as a son. But the mere fact that a 
man is a king, that is, superior to common man, makes him 
a superior man, a superman, hence filled with godlike power ; 
and being so he is divine. 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA I 229 

Professor De Groot, whose view of Chinese religion is 
based on southern practices, calls the religion of ancient 
.China Universism, believing that the philosophy of Yang 
and Yin, that is, the controlling power of the universe as 
exhibited by antithetic elementary principles, male and 
female, underlies it from the beginning and appears in all 
its phenomena. This is to interpret the northern by its 
debased southern form and to inject into primitive thought 
more than it contained. Professor Tiele held that the re- 
ligion was merely animism. This is to ignore the approach 
to God-worship found in the earliest literature. Professor 
Legge, Professor Giles, and Professor Hirth regard the 
earliest Chinese religion as almost or quite monotheistic.^ 
In the interpretation of this " primitive monotheism, of 
which only scanty records remain," ^ there is of course an 
unconscious bias in the direction of the belief current some 
years ago that man's original religion everywhere was mono- 
theism. We find the same assumption, of monotheism as 
the first religion, made in the case of the Hindus and of 
the Egyptians, and even of the Hebrews ! But Chinese re- 
ligion is not primitive. Again, it is like that of other Mon- 
golians, and, since we are acquainted with the raw religion of 
the savages racially connected with them, if we are to make 
any assumption it should be along historical and ethnolog- 
ical lines, which would lead us to the conclusion that wor- 
ship of ancestors is more likely than monotheism to have 
been the " primitive religion " of the Chinese. 

Worship of ancestors implies a belief in a life hereafter. 
The Chinese did in fact believe that their ancestors at 
death lived somewhere and could come at call. They spoke 
of the spirit of the departed as going up, and differentiated 
between the ascending spirit and earthly part; but it was 

1 " The ancient Chinese were decided monotheists. . . . The wor- 
ship of ancestors began to be gradually cultivated as a side develop- 
ment of this original monotheism." Hirth, op. cit., pp. 78, 100. 

2 Giles, Religion of Ancient China, London, 1905, p. 13. The 
same view is held by most of the older scholars, who thought 
Chinese religion was a degraded monotheism. 



230 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

only divine beings like kings and perhaps their great min- 
isters who were imagined to live in the sky ; except as they 
were thought of as stars. Of this belief, however, there 
is no direct evidence in the earliest period. There is only 
one worship for all people in that period, namely that 
of the ancestors. At the solstices the emperor made sac- 
rifice to Heaven and to Earth, a sacrifice offered on the 
ground with the simplest utensils, the victim being a bull- 
calf ; in the case of Heaven in the southern and in the case 
of Earth in the northern suburb. The worship of Heaven 
is often united with that of mountains and rivers. Sun and 
moon were worshipped with sacrifice on the east and west of 
the city, respectively. 

But only the emperor was of old allowed to sacrifice to 
Heaven and Earth. Himself the Son of Heaven and as 
worthy of worship as Heaven itself (being revered while 
alive with the three prostrations and nine khowtows with 
which Heaven is revered), the emperor, who is called 
*' Mate of Heaven," adores Heaven as if Heaven were 
his own ancestor. The real significance of this feature 
of early Chinese religion ^ lies in its betrayal of the ex- 
clusiveness of the worship. To the common man. Heaven 
was too glorious and majestic to approach; his private 
gods were his ancestors and the lower spirits. Even in 
worshipping Heaven at the present time, it is not as God 
but as a spirit with whom Earth as another spirit is asso- 
ciated. " The husbandman at harvest [today] acknowl- 
edges that it is his duty to thank Heaven and worship 
Earth" (instead of saying that he worships God. Edkins, 
ibid. ) . 

Common people, who were not permitted to sacrifice to 

1 Although forbidden to do so by Confucian rule, yet private per- 
sons at the present time do not hesitate to offer incense and prayer 
to Heaven on the new and full moons. " The Chinese say that 
Heaven should be worshipped only by the emperor. . * . This is 
the theory, but it is not strictly carried into practice. Some profess 
to worship Heaven once a year, others twice a month." Edkins, 
Religion in China, London, 1878, p. 92. 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA I 23 1 

Earth or Heaven, sacrificed to the door, ground, and field, 
while the officers intermediate between emperor and people, 
offered prayers for the people to the hills, streams, and 
springs.^ This ceremony took place at the beginning of 
summer. It was followed by the great summer sacrifice 
for rain, which was offered to the five elemental gods, in- 
terpreted by some as " to God," with music, for '' music 
stimulates virtue " ; and finally, in this ceremony, sacrifice 
was offered to the ghosts of deceased princes, high ministers, 
officers, and those who had benefited the people, the worship- 
pers " praying that there may be a good harvest." When 
the crop was to be planted, the emperor in state guided 
the plough for the first furrows; when the harvest was 
ripe, the emperor tasted of the first fruits. Minute regu- 
lations indicate a later Taoist development codified during 
the Han dynasty (circa 200 b. c. to 200 a. d.). 

The ordinary worship, addressed rather to spirits of the 
ancestors and spirits of the earth than to Shang Ti (Su- 
preme Ruler, as God) or to Heaven, is reflected in the 
earliest religious songs. Out of thousands of religious 
songs current in his day Confucius made a compilation of 
some three hundred, composed in rhymed strophes, the 
Shi-King. In how far these songs or odes as they stand 
today are really the songs of the times to which they are 
ascribed, we cannot say. But, from the nature of the case, 
songs are less apt to be tampered with than philosophy or 
history. Certain Shang songs of the second dynasty (1766- 
1122 B.C.), only five in all, seem really to belong to the 
twelfth century and they are regarded by Sinologues as the 
oldest in the collection. Most of the others we must be 
content to refer to a period indefinitely older than the time 
of Confucius, perhaps dating from the eighth century on- 
ward. 

In these five Shang songs the oldest expression of reli- 
gion is to invoke the spirit of the ancestor and to " delight " 

1 Or to spirits of these places. See the note on p. 234. 



232 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

him, as it is said in the first song by music, not by liba- 
tions, as is the later practice.^ This song begs the an- 
cestral spirit to regard kindly the seasonal sacrifice, made 
in his honour by the descendant, who prepares himself for 
the ceremony by fasting and thus seeks to " realize the 
ancestor," thought of as being at the time in his shrine. 
This " meritorious ancestor " repeatedly sends down bless- 
ings, as is said in the second song, where the ghost is lured 
to his descendant by means of an offering of soup and other 
viands, in order that he may confer longevity and send 
down prosperity from Heaven. The fifth of these songs 
speaks of pines and cypresses being cut down to make a 
temple for the ancestors,^ who is here the former king and 
still watches over his people and preserves them. Thus 
three of the five songs of this oldest collection have to do 
only with ghost- or ancestor-worship. The third song, pos- 
sibly of the thirteenth century b. c, alludes to the miracu- 
lous birth of an ancestor by means of a swallow sent down 
by Heaven, and the fourth also speaks of Heaven or " God " 
as founding the line, so that a Supreme Spirit is here recog- 
nized as directing the event which led to the ancestor's high 
position, the reason given being that this ancestor revered 
God and hence by God's favour he was appointed to be the 
model of the " nine regions " or provinces of the kingdom, 
and Heaven treated him as a son. 

Heaven is expressly called *' yon blue sky " and even the 
sex of Heaven is not fixed. An ode ascribed to the ninth 
century has the expression " O mother Heaven, why dost 
Thou not understand ? " 

The songs of lamentation reflect only that aspect of de- 

1 Later, the drums, the sounding-stone, and song made the music. 
Intoxicants (known as early as the twenty-third century, according 
to Professor Legge) were used only at great sacrifices, to entertain 
guests, and for family feasts. 

2 Only the ancestor has a temple; other spirits have altars or 
tablets. Great simplicity marks the early rite. It is said' in the 
Shu-King that " officiousness in sacrificing is irreverent and multi- 
plying ceremonies leads to disorder." 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA I 233 

spair which may appear in any religion. If one poet says 
that Heaven is unjust, it is only right to remember that an- 
other says, " There is the great Supreme Lord, does he 
hate any one ? " There is, in truth, a vigorous protest 
against the pessimistic view. The ordinances of Heaven 
may be inexplicable to men, but " the calamities of the vul- 
gar do not come from Heaven." Officers may not (do not) 
stand in awe of Heaven and the innocent may suffer with 
the guilty; great and wide Heaven may have sent down 
death and famine; compassionate Heaven may be arrayed 
in terrors; and yet it is not God that causes the evil, but 
the evil ways of men produce evil, and hence it is that 
" Heaven arrayed in terrors sends down its net of crime." 
The song asserting that calamities do not come from 
Heaven may be dated with tolerable certainty as composed 
in 776 B. c. The irregularity of Heaven, or, as sometimes 
expressed, the fact that Heaven has " reversed," is not 
Heaven's fault. Heaven also is bound in the complex of 
the good and evil. Departure from the Way (of rectitude) 
compels Heaven's anger; it is not a matter of kindness or 
compassion, as men think, but of inexorable law. This is 
finely expressed in the Tang Ode: 

How vast is God, the ruler of men below; 

How arrayed in terrors is God ; 

With many things irregular in his ordinations 

Heaven gave birth to the multitudes of the people; 

But the nature it confers is not immutable. 

Born good (by nature) are all; but few remain good. 

It is not Heaven that makes you drunk. 

So that you follow evil devices. 

It is not God that has caused the evil times ; 

Evil times arise when one abandons the good old ways. 

The explanation of the enigma is that people are normally 
virtuous. Their " faculties are attuned to the law of 
Heaven." Hence there is no use in crying with the poets, 
'* I look up to great Heaven, when shall I find repose?" 
or " I look up to great Heaven, but it shows no kindness " 



234 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

(two songs begin thus), for "those whom Heaven does not 
approve sink in ruin " by a natural law applicable to the 
king, as Son of Heaven, and to his people. So it is said: 
" Great Heaven makes no mistake ; if the king deteriorates 
he will bring his people to great distress." The natural 
law is somewhat quaintly expressed by the words of an- 
other song : " The doings of high Heaven have neither 
sound nor smell," that is, the power operates silently. 

If we may take the Shi-King as the earliest religious ex- 
pression of China, as it assuredly is except for the mystic 
lines of the Yih-King, we may sum up that expression 
with the remark that it teaches the cult of Heaven and of 
other spirits, especially of ancestors,^ which seems to be the 
earlier phase, with a growing sense of the personality of 
Heaven as God, and a vague belief that the ghosts or spirits 
of men live somewhere hereafter, though the exact place 
is vaguely conceived. A lady bereaved of her husband says, 
" After death I shall go to his abode," apparently meaning 
no more than is expressed in the lover's lament, " Living 
we may be separated, but when dead we shall share one 
grave." Yet the ancestors do not remain in the grave ; 
they are tutelary spirits watching over their families; they 
receive food and are honoured with music and the dance. 
Thus one song says : " People dance with the flute, to the 
notes of organ and drum; all the instruments make har- 
mony; all this is done to please the ancestors." So the 
ancestors known as Fathers of War and of Husbandry are 
to the Chinese the most personal gods they have. This 
crops out repeatedly, as in the following bucolic ode, at- 

1 The cult of the spirit of the path (when one journeys) and of 
hills and rivers is recognized, but it is not certain whether the 
earHer conception is that the mountain is itself divine or has a spirit. 
Some passages favour the former view, but others clearly recognize 
the animistic divinity of phenomena. One of the Shi odes says of 
the model King Wu that after a victory "he sacrificed to Heaven, 
hills, and rivers." A virtuous king "gives rest to the hundred 
spirits, even to Ho and to the highest hills." This naturisfn is sys- 
tematically neglected in accounts of Chinese religion, which as- 
sume that " hills " are always " spirits of hills." 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA I 235 

tributed to some one, perhaps an officer of state, who joins 
with his men in the activities of the farmer : " With lutes 
and drums will we invoke the Father of Husbandry and 
pray (him) for sweet rain to increase the produce of our 
millet fields and bless my men and their wives. . . . We 
remove the insects that eat the roots and joints of the grain, 
so that they shall not injure the young plants. May the 
spirit, the Father of Husbandry,^ lay hold of these (pests) 
and put them in the blazing fire. May rain come, first on 
the public lands then on our private fields. Yonder shall 
be handfuls left on the ground and ears untouched, for the 
benefit of the widow." This song is famous for its tone of 
loyalty expressed in the desire that the private land shall 
be blessed with rain after the public land. It is noteworthy 
also, though not unique, for the closing words, full of com- 
passion for the needy. The ancestral spirits are supposed 
to partake of the sacrifice offered to them ; but in the sacri- 
fice to Heaven the incense of the food is enough. Thus 
when the king goes to the border to offer the sacrifice of 
the new year, on a day deemed auspicious by the olR^iners, 
the words of the appropriate song are : " We divine the 
right day; we then sacrifice a ram to the spirit of the path; 
we offer flesh, roast and boiled, and thus bring in the new 
year. We load the stands with offerings . . . and as soon 
as the fragrance ascends, God (Shang Ti) well-pleased 
smells the sweet savour." 

Extraordinary occasions, such as war, famine, even a 
hunt, caused the celebration of special sacrifices. But as 
rich and poor alike had only one sacrifice, that to the an- 
cestors, it is probable that other features are more ad- 
ventitious and in part later; as the cult of agricultural 
spirits reflects later conditions economically. Streams and 
hills change as hordes move; the constant spirits are those 
of the ancestors who move on with the horde. But Heaven 
and Earth also are present always and their worship be- 

1 Shen Nung, the patriarchal emperor, whose " date " is 2737- 
2705 B. c. Hou-tsi, whose miraculous birth is recounted above, is 
also a " f ellov/ of God," a deified " giver of v/heat and barley." 



2^6 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

came more pronounced as kings claimed to be sons of 
Heaven, whose worship was united with that of Earth as 
parents of all. But even Heaven-worship was felt to be a 
sort of ancestor worship reserved for Heaven's special son, 
the emperor. 

The general distinction between T'ien (Thien), Heaven, 
** bright and high," and Ti, Ruler, or Shang Ti, Supreme 
Lord (God) is this. T'ien remains more materialistic; the 
blue sky, " vast and distant," although it is " our parent," 
inclines to the idea of an abstract power like Fate.^ But 
Shang Ti is more a personal anthropomorphized spirit in 
heaven, who may walk on earth. Yet circa 600 b. c, in the 
Shu King, there is usually no difference between Heaven 
and God (Shang Ti). The titles interchange in the same 
passage; it is only that the general trend of expression 
tends to make " bright and glorious " Shang Ti more per- 
sonal and ** bright and high " T'ien more an indefinite Sky- 
power. But often there is not even this distinction. Both 
are called "Supreme." Shang Ti is the heavenly spirit; 
Heaven is the blue sky conceived as intelligent and moral 
orderer of the universe. The idea of God, far from begin- 
ning with an abstraction, grows out of the conception of 
the blue bright wide sky as a power superior to the power 
of the high hill, etc. In this the Chinese thought as did the 
Aryans, who regarded the " bright sky " as " Sky-Father " 
and as the Father in Heaven.^ In the Shu King it is said : 
" Heaven gives birth to the people, and to the rulers to 

1 Yet man's fate is not in the hands of Heaven. Men shorten 
their own lives. " Heaven considers only their virtue and gives 
them length of years accordingly," " Heaven is intelligent and 
impartial." It cares only for order (virtue). Long life is always 
desired : " Five are the sources of happiness, long life, wealth, 
mens sana in corpore sano, love of virtue, and fulfilling the (divine) 
will." (Shu King.) 

2 With Shang Ti in sacrifice are associated the Six Honoured 
Ones, perhaps grouped together as The Seven Directors. The em- 
peror " sacrifices to Shang Ti, the Six Honoured Ones, hills, rivers, 
and the herd of spirits" (in 2283 B.C.!). Altars are raised on hills 
to the hills, but the ancestral service is held in a temple with 
seven shrines (Shang and Chou dynasties). 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA I 237 

regulate the people; Heaven gifted our king with valour; 
(the other king) falsely alleged the sanction of Supreme 
Heaven, but God disapproved of him " (iv. 2). 

The " will of Heaven " is ascertained by dreams and divi- 
nation.^ The common form of divination was by the tor- 
toise-shell, the arched back probably representing the vault 
of heaven. This was heated till it cracked, the lines rep- 
resenting an answer. The lines of the Yih King probably 
were used in divination. Other indications were given by 
the stalks of a plant, the millefoil or yarrow. God sends 
a dream to indicate whom a king should choose as his min- 
ister (Shu King). In political changes, however, the voice 
of the people is the voice of God. " Heaven loves the peo- 
ple " (not the king) ; " Heaven will effect what the people 
desire " ; " to the king the people is God." Maintenance of 
the Right Order by means of a man who revolts against 
tyranny is always regarded as part of the divine plan, with 
which all spirits and good men will agree. Heaven de- 
clares itself by its orderly processes and righteousness with 
which, to succeed, man must be in accord.^ Though oracles 
are not known, there is a suggestion of hidden " responses " 
which seem to act as oracles. The relation between man 
and Heaven is so close that spiritual intelligences, it is 

1 When fortunate, divination should not be repeated, but often dif- 
ferent kinds are tried at the same time. 

2 In 1 1 19 (?) B.C. the king fell ill and his brother, the Duke Tau, 
reared three altars to his three immediate ancestors and addressed 
them: "If you three have charge in heaven of him who is son of 
Heaven, let me be substitute (die for him), who am better able than 
he to serve spiritual beings." He then divined with three tortoise- 
shells (one for each king) and '' looked at the responses," which 
were kept locked up. All were favourable. " He will live," said the 
Duke, and the next day the king got well. Noticeable is here the 
fact that the appeal is not made to Heaven, but to the ancestors 
who " in Heaven have charge of Heaven's son." The date is un- 
certain, but the tale is old as it is famous. What the oracular 
responses were, is not indicated. Tablets of the ancestors were 
carried into battle, and soldiers who were brave were rewarded on 
the spot " before the ancestors" of the king ; if recreant, they were 
slain " before the spirits of the land " ; their children also were 
slain (Shu King; pretended date, "2188" B.C.). 



238 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

said, are influenced by perfect government and put to 
rest. The ethical import is clearly stated in the Shu King: 
" God ^ confers a moral sense even on inferior people," 
and in its advice to kings : " Do not oppress ; be gentle 
but strict ; promote harmony by forbearance (the later doc- 
trine of compliance). People are born good ; they are made 
bad only by (their environment, by) things (external), 
which cause them to follow their own desires." This radical 
teaching is, however, not always maintained. Thus in the 
Shu (Yii) it is also said " The mind of man is prone to err; 
its affinity to what is right is small." Other Tao doctrine 
in the Shu is shown by the insistence on the doctrine of the 
mean, by its statement that pride brings low and humility 
exalts, for this is the Way of Heaven. Sin evidenced by 
disaster to the people is regarded as due to the king, who 
" takes to himself all guilt and evil." 

The Li Ki is later than the other King and in its present 
form cannot be older than the Han dynasty. What re- 
mains in it of older value is not its incredible minuteness 
of ritualistic observance, though this is important as an 
index of the spirit of Confucianism, but the accidental 
glimpses it affords into conditions not recommended but in- 
cidentally mentioned, sometimes with disapproval. The 
State, when elaborate ceremonial was the chief religious 
motif, is one still harbouring barbarous practices, though 
civilized by comparison with its neighbours. China was 
a small land surrounded by savages who, though living in 
caves and tatooing themselves and eating raw meat, yet 
made a constituent part of the empire as compared with the 
" demon nations " of the North (compare Avestan danhu). 
Foreign customs and manners were introduced into China 
itself soon after Confucius's day and it helps to explain 
his insistence on the good old customs of the ancestors 

1 Here one with " Yon Great Heaven," preceding, and the " Way 
of Heaven," following (iv. 2). In the Shu also it is said that 
" Heaven arranges all social relations. Heaven hears as the people 
hear, sees as the people see, and approves as the people approve." 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA I 239 

to recognize that similar innovations were made even in his 
Hfetime. But China itself, the Middle Kingdom, was not 
without its inherited savagery marked by the regular muti- 
lation of prisoners of war as well as the usual mutilations 
practised on prisoners for crime.^ From a religious point 
of view it is interesting to see that the custom of burying 
the dead with the living was not uncommon. At a later 
date human sacrifices are not unknown, one even of a royal 
heir of a conquered province. In 621 b. c, three brothers 
of Duke Mu and others of his family and retainers to the 
number of one hundred and seventy-seven were buried with 
him. This custom of immolating human beings to accom- 
pany the dead into the next world can be traced back but 
little earlier than this. It arose with the growing belief 
in the more human attributes of the dead, their needs and 
desires hereafter as projected from earthly conditions, and, 
since earlier ideas on this subject were very vague, it may 
be questioned whether this particular barbarity was not 
introduced from the outside world, perhaps from the Tar- 
tars.^ For it is quite a different matter whether one tempts 
royal ancestral ghosts with music to one's altar or provides 
for their future pleasure a family of retainers and all the 
pomp and circumstance of home.^ 

Yet even in the Middle Kingdom a witch or " some dis- 
eased person" (a cheap bargain!) was exposed to die in 
the sun when rain failed to come in due season, in order 
that " pitiless Heaven " might pity and comfort with rain 
the sufferer, and incidentally benefit other people. This 

1 The Li Ki reveals that workmen employed to cut down trees 
for coffins were beheaded if they erred in their work. Drunkenness 
is condemned in the Shu King : " Put to death those who assemble 
and drink together." Another approved rule is that the emperor 
should put to death even those who commit small crimes inten- 
tionally, but not those who commit even great crimes unintentionally. 

~ The Great Wall was built against the Huns in 214 b. c, but as 
early as 481 b. c. Confucius speaks of the " white foreigners," 

3 In the Shu King an emperor sacrifices to the spirit of his just 
deceased father by thrice pouring liquor on the ground, which 
offering is repeated by his minister, after washing his hands. 



240 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

is one of the practices " not approved/' even argued against 
with scornful irony; but clearly it was a practice derived 
from antiquity. It differs from " sympathetic magic " by 
introducing the sympathy of Heaven as a religious element, 
as it differs from the punishment of a Hermes or saint, 
whose will has power. 

The Li Ki records incidentally many simple superstitions, 
such as that hawks become doves and grass becomes fire- 
flies at certain seasons, which illustrate the faith in trans- 
formation and perhaps show that to the Chinese there was 
no very definite line between animate and inanimate mat- 
ter. Hills (per se) receive sacrifice that they may guard 
their local district, as Sky (Heaven) guards the Kingdom. 

The name, as person, produces in China (as the Li Ki 
shows) strict taboo of the name of the dead. Immediately 
after a man dies, his son goes to the roof and calls his 
father by name, " Come back. So and So " ; ^ but this is a 
final effort of affection to bring back the soul before it has 
quite fled. After this, when the dead is recognized as 
really gone, the name must not be mentioned. So when one 
enters a house, one must at once inquire what names are 
taboo in the family, a very necessary precaution, as proper 
names may also be those of common things; for which rea- 
son it is the rule that one should not give a son a (common 
noun) name of any hill, river, day, month, state, or disease. 
The last item shows that children were occasionally given 
mean names, as they are today in South India, for the pur- 
pose of warding off the evil (envious) eye or an evil spirit. 

WaiHng for the dead is incidentally said to be " from 
love or from fear," a conservative statement. The mourn- 
ers for the dead not only wail and put on special garments, 
but they leap, and leaping is said to be as imperative or im- 
portant as is wailing. This leaping or wild dancing ^ is 

1 Instead of calling out, one may shoot arrows to arrest the de- 
parting soul ; but if the name is called in that event is not stated. 

2 The northern Chinese Buddhists also still have the cham harail 
(sacred dance) as a part of their religious rites. 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA I 24I 

performed three times. There is also mention of a three- 
fold deasil (a Hindu rite) around the grave, but as if it 
were an unusual custom. In this case the mourner with 
bared left arm walks around the grave from left to right 
three times. Seven is also a holy or at least respectful 
number, as may be seen from the fact that on the death of 
an emperor his revered body is put into the coffin on the 
seventh day after death and buried in the seventh month, 
while his ancestral temple embraces seven small fanes.^ 
In feeding the dead the mouth is stuffed with rice and pieces 
of flesh are placed beside the corpse. Ridicule is made of 
the idea that the dead actually need the food. One good 
man filled jars with pickles for his dead wife and he is 
laughed at; but the explanation that the jars are not really 
intended to feed the dead is historically false, though doubt- 
less when the Li Ki was composed a more refined meaning 
was current. Incense (of aromatic wood) is burned to 
attract and show respect to the dead; perhaps earlier to 
dissipate odours less pleasant. Candles on the bier are not 
to cheer but chase the spirits. 

From the formal recommendation of the Li Ki we learn 
that the constant sacrifices were first the great seasonal 
sacrifices ^ offered by the emperor to Heaven and Earth, 
who also sacrificed to the four quarters and to [the spirits 
of ?] mountains and rivers.^ The bull-sacrifice was reserved 

1 These were erected to his "spiritual sovereigns" (ancestral 
ghosts). It is they who punish a bad king ("saying, 'Why dost 
thou oppress my people? '"), quite as much as does God. Thus, too, 
of the people. In the Shu a king says : " The former kings will 
punish you (the people), if you disobey me and when they punish 
you from above, you will have no escape." The Seven Directors of 
Heaven may have been thus conceived. 

2 It is worthy of note that according to the express statements of 
the Shu King neither Heaven nor ancestral spirits accept a sacrifice 
as such ; " only the sincere and reverent " can have their sacrifices 
accepted. Reverence disposes Heaven to show favour and to make 
one wise or virtuous. Conversely, calamities sent by Heaven may be 
averted (they are chastisements and cease when no longer required) ; 
but calamities " brought on by oneself " are not to be escaped." 

3 On a punitive expedition the emperor sacrificed also to the God 
of War. When mourning for his father (for three years) the em- 



242 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

for royalty. Two bulls were sacrificed to Heaven and 
Earth, when a new city was founded, by the emperor's own 
hand. Nobles might not sacrifice to Heaven but must 
sacrifice to Earth and to their own district spirits, using 
rams and boars for this purpose. Lesser officials used 
lesser animals, and common people made offerings of their 
ordinary food, such as rice, eggs, geese, or pigs. There is 
no " unclean " animal. At a sacrifice, the emperor eats 
beef or dog's meat with equal complacency. The object 
of sacrifice is clearly stated to be the pleasuring of spirits 
with music, food, or incense, in order to their appearance 
at the sacrificer's altar and the " adjustment of their rela- 
tions " with man. Sacrifice in view of supposed transgres- 
sion is acceptable to the gods, although it is drily remarked 
that ** repentance never overtakes the past." In general, 
there was a " minister of religion," to regulate all services 
rendered to the Manes and other spirits. Once there is men- 
tion of a noble lord who wished to sacrifice himself for the 
sins of his people ; and the royal prayer that evil and guilt, 
inferred from national calamities, may be expiated by 
the speaker, not by the people, sufficiently indicates that 
the idea of transferred sin is not unfamiliar. Usually, 
however, sacrifices are simply to please, given with affection 
or reverence ; or, it may be, for aid, and after success, as 
it were in thanksgiving, for victory or harvest. Typical 
is the great imperial sacrifice, when the ruler and his wife 
take alternate parts in presenting offerings, and all is done 
solely " to please the spirits of the dead and unite the living 
and the disembodied." As shown in the Shi King, an offer- 
ing to spirits is a sort of family feast, which on occasion 
may become a means of asking aid from the ghostly chief 
guests. As with the queen, so with other women, they are 
not debarred from religious offices in honour of the dead.^ 

peror sacrificed only to Heaven, Earth, and the spirits of land and 
grain. One-tenth of the royal expenditures was devoted to defray- 
ing the cost of sacrifices. 

1 Otherwise the position of woman is one of marked inferiority. 
She has nothing to do with religion in general. Her whole duty is 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA I 243 

All approved offerings and sacrifices were to beneficent 
beings. There was no official cult of evil spirits. Yet 
they were recognized by ceremonies, such as the noisy dem- 
onstration to drive away demons of pestilence. This cere- 
mony impressed Confucius, apparently as a sort of recog- 
nition of their power, which he emphasized by respectful 
behaviour toward them. Drought, too, is an evil demon. 
In short, as elsewhere, most natural ills are demons or 
brought in by demons. These may act as servants of spirits 
for chastisement, so' that even the common man must be 
religiously observant of all rites permitted by his circum- 
stances, although it is said that the complex ceremonies of 
social and religious life are not for common people, only 
for the higher classes.^ 

At the present day China still bows to every sort of spirit, 
nor are all easy to divine. Animals represent souls in 
many cases, as when pigs and rats are possessed of girls' 
souls. But there are also natural spirit-animals, serpents, 
which are not necessarily (though they may be) '* pos- 
sessed " ; cocks, as holy birds which chase demons ; the tor- 
toise, the image of which on a grave gives a man's descend- 
ants long life; foxes, which take human shape. An ordi- 
nary animal, however, is not worshipped for itself but for 
possessing a soul of a man; some by eating a man's body 
eat his soul, etc. There is no end to the metamorphoses 
conceived as possible. Men become rocks ; poles have spir- 
its; metals become animate; men become water-spirits 

"neither to do wrong nor to do good (conspicuously); only to 
think about the spirits and the food and to cause her parents no 
sorrow." Compare Pericles (ap. Thucydides) to the women of 
Athens : " Let there be as little talk as possible among men about 
you, either in praise or blame." In almost the exact words of the 
Hindu legislators it is said that a woman's duty is " in youth, to 
obey her father or elder brother; when married to obey her hus- 
band ; and to obey her son when she becomes a widow." 

1 Extraordinary in so moral a code as that of the Li Ki is the 
statement that the high class officials are not amenable to the laws : 
" High officials are not bound by penal statutes, as common people 
are not bound by ceremonies." 



244 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

(kvei) and cause disease, etc. One-legged hill-spirits are 
not spirits of the hill but malformed spirits living in it. 
Against all evil spirits drums and flags will avail; exorcism 
also, with precedent fasting ; or the blood of a dog or cock ; 
or clubs, knives, red (fire-cracker) flame or colour; even 
twigs or a mirror. Dog, cock, and monkey (as scapegoat) 
carry oif disease-demons ; amulets avert them. For good 
luck are efficacious coffin-nails, the svastika, coins, horse- 
shoes, the peach-tree and its wood, apparently not as spirits. 
Each of the five elements, metal, wood, water, fire, and 
earth, has its indwelling spirit or dem.on. Many of these, 
like the svastika, may be of Buddhistic origin. 

Apart from ethical and political questions, the purely re- 
ligious aspect of China did not change much from the early 
period till the advent of Buddhism, and even after this 
time it has remained substantially the same till the present 
day, except that certain Buddhistic spirits have been widely 
adopted. The chief deities worshipped in this Chinese sys- 
tem are first Heaven and all its parts. Sun, Moon, Stars, 
the five planets, especially the twenty-eight signs of the 
lunar zodiac and certain constellations, such as the Great 
Bear. Second, the Earth and all its parts, mountains, rivers, 
soil, grain, earthquakes, drought, as spirits of good or ill. 
Third, Wind, Rain, Heat, Cold, Thunder, Lightning, that 
is, all meteorological phenomena. Fourth, the deified Sea- 
sons and Quarters, four each. Fifth, The Five Parts of 
the House, Gate, Door, Wall, Hearth, and Court. Heaven 
and the Planets were regarded as emperors with the stars 
as their officials, though they were but little personified. 
Titles of the lower deities were indifferently Prince, Mas- 
ter, or god, thus. Prince of the Wind, Master of Rain, Door 
God, or simply the Thunderer. Gradually dead persons, as 
tutelary divinities, have taken the place of original spirits 
in the case of Soil and Grain, Kou Lung of the soil and 
Ch'i of the grain. Military and other heroes have thus 
after death been deified as God of War and as other spirits, 
such as the spirit of water and of epidemics. Even a de- 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA I 245 

ceased woman, under the Han dynasty, was made Princess 
of Demons, because, dying in childbirth, she appeared sub- 
sequently as a ghost. So a few ghosts became national 
gods, while the regular family ghosts were divinities only 
to their own families. The emperor (and his representa- 
tives) sacrificed to nature-spirits; common people only to 
their own ancestors and to their door-god or hearth-god. 
But about the time of the Christian era these rules were 
more or less neglected and sacrifice was permitted by others 
than the Emperor and his officials, even priestesses being 
allowed to make offerings in the temples. If there were no 
officials at hand, the people themselves might worship the 
gods instead of having the service performed by officials.^ 

These are the chief traits of Sinism as gleaned from the 
literature antecedent to the great teachers of China. Be- 
fore turning to their work, we may for a moment consider 
the negative side of this religion, and what the records fail 
to say. Creation is mythologically ascribed not to Heaven 
or God but to the cosmic Giant P'anku, who is naively de- 
scribed as a carpenter hewing the world out of unformed 
material and then as providing material by becoming in his 
own body the universe. He chiselled out of masses of 
granite,, floating in space, sun, moon, and stars. His labour 
done, he died. His head became mountains ; his voice, thun- 
der; his beard, the stars, etc. Certain natural phenomena, 
worshipped by most savages, are expressly mentioned as 
worshipped in the later literature and they may be implied 
in the earlier, though there is little said about them. The 
tortoise and divination plant suggest that these may have 

1 A. Forke, Lun-Heng, in the Ostasiatische Studien, Leipzig, 1906, 
p. 222f, Confucianism as a philosophy held various opinions re- 
garding God and the soul. Some of the learned scholars of the fifth 
century a. d. denied providential retribution in the present and the 
existence of the soul in the future. The individual soul has many 
divisions, as the blood-soul, breath-soul and others less vital in nail 
and hair ; some are gross and some etherial. The shadow is a 
soul and the dream is a soul's journey. In this soul-belief the 
ancient Chinese were on 'a par with savages, as they were in con- 
ceiving of all other spirits as bound to matter. 



246 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

been holy in themselves, and we know that there were holy 
trees, such as the acacia, plum, and fir. Serpents were 
prayed to as dragon water-gods and sacrifice v/as made to 
them. In 756 b. c, sacrifice was made to a yellow snake 
as a " manifestation of God." Stones resembling human 
beings were worshipped ; probably also phallic stones, as 
they are today, though their original function is almost for- 
gotten.^ The spring-festival and fire-walking rite, in which 
men leaped through fire, hacking themselves with knives, 
preserve a similar recollection of a fire- or sun-cult. Animal 
myths show that peculiar mana powers were supposed to 
reside in certain phenomena. Shrines are found erected 
to animals and even today stone animals erected upon 
tombs are very commonly worshipped. Such modern fea- 
tures have probably always made part of the popular re- 
ligion, which, like all Oriental religions, is for ever making 
new gods. Thus the great professional gods of today are 
not a trait peculiar to modern China, but are the most recent 
expression of this ancient ancestor-worshipping people. 

But what is entirely lacking in the. older religion is the 
idea of the priest and his inevitable concomitants. Until 
the advent of Buddhism, the Chinese religion had neither 
a priesthood nor a mythology. Buddhism entered China 
before the Christian era, according to received tradition, 
though there was no active propaganda till the first cen- 
tury of our era. For the first time in China, it offered the 
spectacle of monks, virtually priests, united in a body and 
spiritually set apart. Old China had no priest. Services 
were conducted by the emperor, who even slaughtered sac- 
rificial victims with his own hand, or by the mandarins who 
officially represented him. It is indeed sometimes said that 
the emperor was " High Priest," but this is a figure of 
speech. To be a high priest one must have lower priests 
under him; but the mandarins were nobles not priests. 
Emperor and nobles officiated, as in their humbler worship 

^Man, London, 1913, No. 41. 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA I 247 

did the ordinary householder, without mediators, even as 
the spirits worshipped performed no mediatorial office in 
respect of the Supreme Lord. And as there was no priest 
there was no hell and no dire fate to be dreaded hereafter. 
So, as to the gods, the old Chinese worshippers had no vain 
imaginings. The gods or spirits were too vague to be hu- 
manized; there was no Olympus, no adventures, war-like 
or amorous, of the celestial spirits. These lacunae are due 
to the same cause. The uninstructed Chinaman neither 
invented a picturesque heaven above nor a hell below, be- | 
cause his whole spiritual interest lay in the lives already ' 
lived by his ancestors. In contrast with Semitic occupa- 
tion with the present and Egyptian preoccupation with the 
future, the Chinaman, it has been said with some truth, was 
occupied with the past. He looked backward rather than 
forward; he was more concerned with his ancestors than 
with his own ghostly future. The gods he worshipped were 
mainly ancestral individuals and group-gods who lacked 
individuality, " spirits of mountains," " spirits of streams." 

Few outward changes in the cult of spirits or ancestors 
are recorded. Libations were added to music to attract 
the spirits, we are told; but even this must be taken in a 
restricted sense, not as implying that the ghosts had not 
been fed previously but that spirituous libations were added 
to music and food. Again, the ancestor was originally sup- 
posed to reside during sacrifice in a wooden tablet ; but dur- 
ing the Chou dynasty it became customary to let living 
representatives of the dead impersonate him for the time be- 
ing. These representatives were temporarily revered and 
could make convenient answers when begged for favours. 
This practice, however, was given up in the third century 
B. c. The chief change was in the direction of anthropo- 
morphization in the case of Heaven as a personal god with 
human attributes and in the establishment of a philosophical 
basis for religious practices. 

This basis is the antithesis of the Yang and Yin as under- 
stood by the explainers of the Yih-King, whose mysterious 



248 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

alternate lines, whole or broken, appear to have been orig- 
inally nothing more than a means of divination. But a 
profound meaning was given to them from early times and 
the strong and weak lines were interpreted as representing 
fire and cold or male and female elements in the universe. 
Together they govern productive nature. The Way of na- 
ture is the method, antedating Heaven itself, through which 
order and righteousness, based on order, first came into 
being.^ Thus the Way or Tao may be called the mother of 
all things, though neither thing nor spirit. Man, as part 
of the universe, has also the dual nature of the Tao, which 
is expressed most conspicuously by Heaven and Earth, par- 
ents of all, one warm and light, one cold and dark. Man's 
earthy soul at death returns to earth. This is the Kvei or 
evil soul, as opposed to the Shen or spiritual soul, which, 
manifested in breath, at the death of the body returns to 
heaven and " moves on high as a shining light." 

1 Compare the Vedic Rita, Right Order, also Zoroastrian, Asha, 
and the Egyptian idea of an Order-goddess above the gods. 



CHAPTER FIFTEEN 

RELIGIONS OF CHINA II 
CONFUCIUS, LAO-TSE, TAOISM 

Two great religious leaders appeared in China in the sixth 
century b. c. Neither, however, taught a new religion. 
One was Lao-tse and the other was Confucius.^ Lao-tse 
(born in 6oi b. c.) was known later as the Wizard of the 
West, whence some have supposed that he came from the 
western world and even that he taught a Taoism derived 
from India. On the contrary, Taoism is thoroughly Chin- 
ese and Lao himself was foreign only to the Middle King- 
dom, being a native of the South (Ch'u state). He ap- 
peared foreign because he was a mystic and mysticism 
was strange to the practical Chinaman. Yet the basis of 
Taoism is inherent in the King, and Taoism belonged to 
Confucius as much as to Laotse; but Lao differed from 
Confucius as to the means of perfecting oneself in Tao. 
The chief work attributed to Lao is the Tao-teh-King or 
Canon of the Way and Purity. If not his text, it epitomizes 
his philosophy in eighty-one paragraphs. 

Both of these teachers recognized that orderly goodness 
is the natural state of the universe controlled by Tao, and 
that man as part of the universe and naturally good is, one 
may say, religiously required to preserve and heighten that 
goodness. Cultivation of the Tao is man's duty. Lao lays 
stress on the firmness and impartiality of Heaven as model 
behaviour for man to imitate and urges also the duty of 

1 These names both contain in Chinese the word tzu or fse (sage). 
Lao-tse is the Venerable Sage; Confucius is a Latinized form of 
K'ung-fu-tse, the Kung-family sage. So Mencius and Licius are for 
Mang-tse and Lieh-tse. 

249 



250 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

compliance, which means that, as parts of the universe do 
not interfere with each other (are comphant), so the ruler 
should be compliant : " The perfect ruler complies with 
the will of the people," he sees to it that their wishes are 
observed. Compliance tends to humility, which is also 
exemplified in nature. It is the humility of the great river 
ever seeking lower ground and gaining thereby in strength, 
as it is the more sought by other streams the lower it is. 
Arrogance and self-assertion have no place in nature; what 
is weaker than water, yet what is stronger? One should, 
too, not be full of oneself ; emptiness, that is freedom from 
materialistic desires and aversions, characterizes the sage 
and the good. 

The doctrine of the Shen Tao (compare the Japanese 
Shinto) or Spiritual Way led to that of an apathetic atti- 
tude toward the affairs of life. Dispassion leads to com- 
plete indifference, including disregard of knowledge, which 
is as baleful as desire.^ To gain real wisdom one must 
discard knowledge. To be full of the divine one must be 
empty of worldliness. There remains for the one seeking 
wisdom only intuition as a guide to Tao. Lao was a mystic, 
who " sought Tao " by contemplation. Probably among 
the recluses of his day there were others who sought it also 
by inducing trances through breath-suppression and the like. 
At any rate it is at this point that the vulgar interpretation 
of Lao-tse's idea begins. Seeking Tao became nothing more 
than seeking for life-elixirs, since Lao himself taught that 
Tao might be obtained even in life. The exercises of con- 
templation soon became the " recondite calisthenics " in- 
culcated by the later doctors of the school as a means of 
securing longevity equal to that of old Phang, who " by 
getting Tao " lived on earth for nigh two thousand years. 
The passive attitude expresses itself in universal benevo- 
lence ; this leads to practical immunity from danger of poi- 

1 Lao-tse himself taught that education and forms of worship are 
not only vain but injurious. The Taoist shibboleth is Wu-wei, 
■' not doing," inaction. 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA II 25 1 

sonous or wild beasts, a Buddhistic trait. Gentleness, fru- 
gality, humility, shrinking back or compliance, not putting 
oneself forward, are virtues taught by the Tao. The Taoist 
has no aim, no desire ; *' he rests and all is well." Sages of 
old had virtue without knowing it. They no more " tried to 
be virtuous " than a black crow tries to be black. They 
did not try to be benevolent; they were benevolent just as 
they were tall or hungry. Classes did not exist ; men lived 
naturally, not only like animals but with animals, on a 
friendly footing, as one family. All this is the usual vain 
imagining of those who see the perfect age in the past 
and find in man a natural goodness which can be brought to 
light by divesting him of the artificial obstruction to per- 
fection with which civilization has surrounded him. There 
is therefore nothing very new to us in Lao's doctrine though 
it was strange to his hearers. As an ethical teacher, he 
alone reached the height of proclaiming the rule of " re- 
paying injury with kindness," as a norm of conduct. Con- 
fucius, confronted with this doctrine, repudiated it and 
taught instead " reciprocity " — treat others as they treat 
you. Be just to the injurer, kind to the kind, is Confu- 
cius's rule. 

Before speaking of the later forms of Taoism it will be 
necessary now to examine the teaching of Confucius him- 
self. Fifty years younger than Lao-tse, a practical states- 
man, a man of the world, Confucius, it is said, once paid 
a visit to Lao, who was at that time over eighty years of 
age, but came away dumbfounded; he could not under- 
stand the sage at all and felt as if he had " encountered a 
dragon." We can easily believe this. Confucius, a timid 
man in any event, was not an original thinker and when 
he met one he felt overcome. The circumstances of Con- 
fucius's life are much better known than those of the Wiz- 
ard of the West. He was born in Lu (part of Shangtung) 
when his father was already over seventy. He became a 
teacher at an early age and spent his life trying to get, and 
occasionally obtaining, political preferment, though he never 



252 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

secured a permanent position. He died a disappointed old 
man, one might almost say a disappointed politician/ were 
it not that his eagerness to get office was inspired by a 
real zeal to put in practice statescraft which he felt would 
better the world. Practical politics, ethically supported, 
was his main interest in life. He had not a spiritual na- 
ture. It is probably correct to say that he believed in 
Heaven, if not in God, but he certainly taught that the best 
way to treat the spirits was to let them alone. He implied 
to his disciples that no man can know anything about spirits 
or Hfe after death, and that it was more important for a 
man to know himself and attend to his present life than to 
worry about spirits and the life to come.^ At the same 
time he was too staunch a conservative to neglect the rites 
and ceremonies of religion. His great service to his coun- 
try was in collecting its ancient literature. He himself 
wrote the annals of the Chou dynasty; but for a moralist 
he wrote them ill, the Ch'un-Ts'iu, or Spring and Autumn 
(Annals, as his work is named) being not only defective but 
" evasive and deceptive.'* His countryman Kung-Yang says 
that " it conceals facts out of regard for the aristocracy, for 
kinsmen, and for men of worth," a native judgment which 
needs only the comment that " concealment " includes mis- 
representation. Confucius must not be blamed too severely ; 
the dynasty he was describing was that of his patron. Yet 
despite this, it is somewhat of a shock to learn that the 
greatest religious teacher of China, who is now worshipped 
in hundreds of temples as a superman, was a deceitful his- 
torian. The fact makes it the more doubtful whether the 
works he collected were not also transmitted in a form use- 
ful to the transmitter's purpose. 
The many anecdotes which were current in regard to the 

1 Chuang-tse taunts Confucius with his political disappointments 
and says that he was twice expelled from his native district of Lu, 
tabooed in Wei, and a failure in Tsi. Confucius was really in exile 
for fourteen years. He was recalled home at the age of sixty-eight. 

2 This is exactly Buddha's attitude. See above, pp. 185, 192. 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA II ^53 

Logia of Confucius were collected and edited as the Lun- 
Yii some time after the master's death. He believed that to 
get wisdom and attain Tao one must get the knowledge of 
the past, which represents the processes of Tao and shows 
how evil kings died evilly and good kings had Heaven's 
support. He endorsed with his approval all the rules of 
ancient days, recommending a strict observance of the cere- 
monial, rites, customs, and etiquette of the virtuous men of 
old. To know these, to follow these, to become as the an- 
cients were, would be to become as perfect as the ancients, 
who lived with due regard to the Right Way. This was all 
practical, not religious, though visionary. He saw no use 
in mysticism. He recognized no value in prayer. When 
his disciples asked if they should pray for him in his extreme 
illness, he replied in effect, Do not pray for me, saying " my 
praying has been for a long time," implying that he had 
long ceased to pray, having nothing to repent of and no 
favours to ask of the spirits of the upper and lower worlds. 
He is described as mild and gentle in demeanour though 
dignified, of easy manners but very respectful.^ He was a 
firm believer in himself as Heaven's agent. On being ad- 
vised not to go among the K'uang people, he replied, " What 
can they do to me? Will Heaven let the cause of truth 
perish ? " As benevolence and knowledge were favourite 
themes of his, he was asked to define them. " Benevolence," 
he said, " is to love men ; knowledge is to know men." He 
taught no secret doctrine. Like Buddha, he expressly de- 
clared that he kept no esoteric wisdom concealed from the 
crowd. " Do not think that I conceal anything," he said, 
" I conceal nothing from you, my disciples ; I do nothing 
which I do not show ; that is my way." " Four things," 
they reported of him, "the master taught, letters, ethics, 

1 Confucius was probably superstitious by nature. The sound of 
thunder or the sight of a mourner discomposed him. He was a hard 
drinker, but light eater. Nowadays he would be described as a 
charitable, timid, finnicky person, rather meticulous ; he was, for 
example, very particular in regard to the length of his night-clothes 
and the use of chop-sticks. 



^54 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

thoroughness of thought, and truthfulness." He did not 
teach reUgion and were it not for his disciples he might well 
be omitted from a history of religion except as a collector 
of religious literature. But owing to his commanding posi- 
tion as guide of Chinese thought for two thousand years he 
is entitled to attention even in his unreligious dicta. " Your 
good villagers," he once said, " are thieves of virtue," mean- 
ing that they were illiberal and narrow. Again he said: 
" If I were sure of becoming wealthy I might become a 
groom to attain that end ; but as it is uncertain whether even 
then I should get rich, I will pursue what I love." Of benev- 
olence and learning he said, " The love of being benevolent 
without the love of learning induces only foolish simplicity." 
Not his, but passed unreproved by him, is the mot quoted 
from his disciple ; " If one does not transgress in great vir- 
tues he may transgress in small virtues." Two political 
maxims are Conf ucius's own. One is : " He who gov- 
erns by his virtue is like the North Star; it keeps its place 
and all the stars turn toward it." This is the kernel of the 
Great Learning; it is the doctrine of example. Confucius 
really believed that the people would be virtuous if the em- 
peror was virtuous and that all a statesman had to do to 
secure virtue and happiness in the state was to have the 
emperor well trained in approved practices.^ The deplor- 
able state of China in his day is remarked upon by him and 
it is characteristic that he emphasizes the decay in manners : 
" The manners of the age have long been in a sad condition." 
The second maxim is implied in the remark that " the pur- 
suit of strange doctrine is injurious." China has always 
been intolerant of heresies. Confucius also laments the 
paucity of scholars and of records. 

The attitude of Lao toward Confucius seems to have been 
one of scornful silence. But Lieh-tse, the later disciple of 

1 Confucins's favourite disciple, Yen Hui, said with the approba- 
tion of his master : " Teach the people propriety and music and 
they will not fortify towns, but fuse their swords into agricultural 
implements" (inaugurating a golden age). 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA II 255 

Lao, and Chuang-tse, the contemporary of Mencius, were 
voluble abusers of the sage and his system, which Chuang- 
tse calls " random jargon." By the fourth century b. c. the 
battle between the schools was at its height and produced 
the two greatest upholders of the old masters. It is not too 
much to say that Chuang-tse really did more than uphold 
Lao's reputation; for if it were not for this learned and 
brilliant follower, the master would have been forgotten, 
except as his ill-used name persists as a cloak to all the 
vain superstitions of later and modern Taoism. 

Confucius was a statesman with ideals which, if not 
broad, were high. He also, it is clear, built his ideals on a 
belief in some moral power " making for righteousness " in 
the universe. Benevolence was characteristic of his religion 
and this is based on the impartial benevolence of Heaven, as 
his inculcation of " right adjustment," propriety, and ap- 
proval of music are based on the wish to imitate Heaven's 
order and regularity. What made him great is the fact that 
he exactly represented the racial spirit; what made him 
popular with royalty was that his ideals tended to uphold 
the status in quo ante. In desiring to bind his country to 
old ideas he implicitly urged official suppression of all per- 
sonal initiative. As any such initiative tends to disturb the 
State, which should be immutable, such a teacher was an ideal 
instructor in the eyes of a State desiring to remain without 
change for ever. As a laudator temporis acti he was no 
innovator, but he was an invaluable preserver of beliefs and 
forms. Though a ritualist by nature and chiefly concerned 
with the " three hundred points of ceremony and three thou- 
sand points of behaviour," his morality really rested on a 
metaphysical basis, as did that of Lao, who also had no other 
religion. Confucius taught ethics practically and the chief 
virtue he inculcated was that of piety, of the son toward the 
father and mother, of the subject toward the emperor. This 
maintains on the one hand the worship of ancestors who are 
dead and on the other loyalty toward the living sovereign. 
In the latter regard it makes the emperor, as Son of Heaven 



256 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

(a Ti), the object of religious devotion like that paid to the 
emperor of Japan. This Shinto spirit in Confucianism ex- 
plains why it, rather than the teaching of Lao-tse, was ex- 
alted by emperors as well as by all those who trod by predi- 
lection the way of their fathers. 

A supplementary rule ascribed to Confucius as part of his 
general rule of piety was wifely obedience, troth in friend- 
ship, and kindness toward those who deserved it. He also 
commends the historical statement that at such and such 
periods men were careful not to injure animal life need- 
lessly. His general ethical system has been codified. Its 
chief rules are to be pious, as explained above, to be benev- 
olent, to cultivate peace, be moderate, study diligently, be 
correct in deportment and courteous in behaviour, oppose 
false accusations and false doctrines, control angry passions, 
and pay taxes. There are many similar rules but not a word 
about God. It is a system of morality rather than of reli- 
gion. Yet it must not be forgotten that it was a religious 
matter with Confucius to worship ghosts, and the exercise of 
the virtues he recommends was also religiously binding. 
His countrymen, though not till many years after his death, 
exalted him, first as a noble, then as the perfect sage, and 
finally served him as a god with many sacrifices and temples. 
Sacrifice was indeed made at his tomb in the second century 
B. c, but his first temple was not built till 555 A. d. Later 
fables exalt his divinity and relate that his birth was her- 
alded by strange portents and miraculous appearances ; genii 
announced to his mother the honour in store for her ; fairies 
attended at his nativity — the usual tales that cluster about 
the birth of a god-man in the Orient.^ 

When Lao-tse died is not known. Confucius, who was 
born in 551 b. c, died in 478 or 479. Put Shang, one of his 
favourite disciples, lived till 406 b. c. The two great disci- 
ples of Lao-tse were Lieh-tse, who lived in the second half of 
the fifth century, and Chuang-tse, who lived in the middle of 

1 Douglass, Confucianism and Taoism, London, 1887, p. 25. 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA II 257 

the fourth century, b. c. The greatest follower of Confucius 
was Mang-tse or Mencius, who was born in 371 (2) and died 
in 288(9) B. c. We thus have a fairly continuous tradition 
in respect to the teaching of both the founders of Chinese 
religions. Confucius's disciples, as was natural, were many 
more than those of the mystic, Lao, and several of them 
were a generation younger than himself.^ 

China has had its pessimists as well as its optimists, its 
hedonists as well as its moralists. Lieh-tse (above) inter- 
preted the doctrine of his master to mean that if death was 
a return to non-existence, one might as well get what pleas- 
ure one could from this present life. As man is absorbed 
into the Creator, man may also become divine ; that is, he 
may not only brave wild beasts with impunity but he may 
be like a god, walk unharmed through fire and go through 
the air. Another follower of Lao-tse, named Moh or 
Mih Ti,^ eraggerated Lao's teaching and expounded a doc- 
trine of saving love. Love for all men will be the salvation 
of the world; all evil comes from hate and unjust distinc- 
tions among men. The principle of love will abolish this 
evil. Perfect love of man, like the sun, blesses all. Moh Ti 
and Yang Chu, a contemporary hedonist, were opposed by 
Mencius, whose seven chapters couched in dialogues sup- 
posed to have taken place between Confucius and others, 
show that his aim was the good of the realm, which might 
be attained by wisdom, humanity, justice, and respectability, 
which leads to piety, care of the dead, and loyalty. Like 
Confucius, Mencius taught that man was good by nature as 
opposed to the view openly professed by others that man 
was naturally evil. Mencius adds something to the doctrine 
of Confucius, but above all he presents his views with a 
vigour and manliness lacking in the timid statements of his 

1 Confucius refers to his disciples as seventy-seven in number. 
He is popularly credited with having had three tJiousand disciples 
during his life-time, of whom seventy-two were accounted " wor- 
thy." 

-The form Mih or Mak is a corruption of Moh Ti (Tih). Like 
Mencius, the name is sometimes Latinized as Micius. 



258 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

master, and it is as a man rather than a novel thinker that 
he deserves regard. " He may not be a sage, but his learn- 
ing has reached the highest point," said his countrymen. 
Confucius believed, but scarcely dared to say, that a wicked 
king should be ousted ; Mencius said roundly that a king was 
of no importance as compared with the people, who indeed 
are the judge: ** Heaven hears as the people hear." He 
dared not only to philosophize but to stand before an em- 
peror and say, " If a king has faults, the nobles should 
remonstrate with him and, if he will not listen, they ought to 
put another king in his place." To revolt against such a 
king is not revolution but " raising the standard of right- 
eousness." As between him and Confucius, the latter laid 
more weight upon benevolence, Mencius upon righteousness ; 
Confucius thought most of private and domestic virtues; 
Mencius allowed for human nature and permitted a king to 
be self-indulgent if he was not false to good government. 
A modern tone appears in his teaching that to be made vir- 
tuous the people must be fed and then educated.^ Starving 
folk cannot be virtuous ; let them fill their bellies and when 
they are no longer hungry they will educate themselves, be- 
come virtuous of themselves. In good years most people 
are good ; in bad years most of them are bad. 

In maintaining that man was naturally virtuous, Mencius 
had to contend not only with those who, like Siiin K'uang, 
his contemporary, held that man was naturally vicious,^ but 
with those who argued that man was naturally neither one 
nor the other but indifferently good or evil, as water flows 
indifferently east or west. Mencius replied that water may 
do this but it will not flow indifferently up or down, and 
asserted that man has within himself a natural principle of 
righteousness and that he has also a natural principle of 

iThis is in direct opposition to Lao-tse, who taught that the more 
people were educated the worse they became. ^ 

2 The argument here is that man's very wish to become virtuous 
proves him naturally evil, for it is only the thin, not those naturally 
fat, who wish to become fat. Man's nature is due to association 
and education, which alone make him good or bad. 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA II 259 

apprehending morax truth. Men naturally feel distress if 
they see a child f ah into a well ; they do not have this feeling 
because they expect gain or have argued it out. Benevo- 
lence and the knowledge of good and evil, together with 
righteousness and propriety, are like man's four limbs. 
There is also a passion-nature, but this is lower and there 
is a restriction in exercising the senses; the higher moral 
nature is chief; passion-nature is subordinate by Heavenly 
appointment,^ and the greatest man is he who " does not 
lose his child-heart." This means apparently that he pre- 
serves unimpaired his natural goodness. The great ques- 
tions of Mencius's time were ethical, and it is evident that 
moral problems were more discussed than any others. As 
Mencius himself reports : " The words of Yang Chu (the 
hedonist and pessimist) and of Moh fill the empire. All peo- 
ple have adopted the views of one or the other." Mencius 
objects to both, to Yang, because his principle, " each for 
himself," ignores loyalty, and to Moh, because " love all 
equally " ignores filial piety, which ought to express a more 
than equal love. Neither of these doctrines introduces us 
to a new religious element. The universal love advocated 
by Moh is not based on a spiritual argument but on prece- 
dents of antiquity and the economic advantage of following 
them. Moh contends that universal love is the best working 
rule for a State and that, if people will not feel this love, 
they should be punished till they do. Yang Chu can scarcely 
be said to deserve a place in a history of religion. He was a 
brilliant cynic without moral basis, inculcating a ruthless 
contempt for antiquity, which paved the way to the stand 
taken by Shi-Huang-Ti (the "First Emperor"), who de- 
stroyed Confucian lore, probably because its key-note was 
that " to establish a kingdom well one must learn the lesson 
of the ancients," the lesson, namely, that tranquillity and 
not conquest is the aim of a good king : " The coat of mail 

^ Professor Legge, who has discussed these points in full in his 
Life and Works of Mencius, London, 1889, compares this with the 
doctrine of Bishop Butler's Sermons tipon Human Nature, 



26o THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

and the helmet give occasion for war," and this is to be 
avoided (Shu-King). 

It is somewhat remarkable that the philosophy of Moh 
(Meh Ti) was regarded by the Chinese themselves as on a 
par with that of Confucius. The two sages are spoken of 
by later authors as the two greatest men of antiquity, as if 
for some centuries Confucius had not yet attained his rank 
of paramount sage. From the point of view of superstition, 
the followers of Moh believed in ghosts and spirits, adoring 
them and imploring their help, while they neglected the cult 
of ancestors. During the Han period, beginning 206 b. c, 
there were several notable Confucianists, such as Yang 
Hiung, while side by side with Lao-tse is placed Huang Ti, 
who is even called the father of Taoism. Huai Nan-tse, 
another Taoist, was so great an alchemist that, it is said, he 
and his household, including his dogs and poultry, all went 
to heaven and became immortal. The Taoist Han Fei-tse 
maintained that virtue is of no account and that scholars 
are parasites or destructive grubs, while divination is de- 
spicable. Tung Chung Shu (150 b. c.) invented a new rain- 
sacrifice and distinguished between disposition, due to Yang, 
and feeling, due to Yin, the former being naturally good, the 
latter evil. 

Chuang-tse (above), the second great disciple of Laotse, 
a century later than Lieh-tse, enlarged upon the cryptic utter- 
ances of his master. He was to Lao-tse what Mencius was 
to Confucius. From Lao-tse we get the wisdom of apparent 
paradox : 

Ignorance produces wisdom. Goodness is not to do good. 
Weakness is stronger than strength. Emptiness is fullness. In- 
action is more active than action (by not-doing all is done). 
Ruling is ruining. Who holds by force, loses. Who subdues 
himself, is mighty. Keep out and you will get in ; keep back and 
you will be advanced. Who is content, has enough. 

Chuang explains Tao in more comprehensible language. 
" The greatest politeness, it is said, is to show no special 
respect to others; the greatest righteousness is to take no 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA II 261 

account of things; the greatest wisdom is to lay no plans; 
the greatest benevolence is to make no show of affection; 
the greatest good faith is to give no pledge of sincerity. 
Repress the impulses of the will; unravel the errors of the 
mind ; put away the entanglements to virtue ; and clear away 
all that obstructs the free course of the Tao. Honours and 
riches, distinctions, austerity, fame and profit, these six pro- 
duce the impulses of the will. Personal appearance and 
deportment, the desire of beauty and subtle reasonings, ex- 
citement of the breath and cherished thoughts, these six 
produce errors of the mind. Hatred and longings, joy and 
anger, grief and delight, these six are the entanglements to 
virtue. Refusals and approachments, receiving and giving, 
knowledge and ability, these six obstruct the course of the 
Tao. When these four conditions, with the six causes of 
each, do not agitate the breast, the mind is correct, and being 
correct it is still and pellucid ; being pellucid it is free from 
pre-occupation and thus enters the state of inaction in which 
it accomplishes everything. . . . Subject and object meet in 
the Tao . . . positive and negative blend in the infinite One 
. . . the universe and I are one. ... If man loves God as 
his father, he should have a greater love for that which is 
greater than God " (Tao). 

But in other regards Chuang is distinctly an innovator ; nor 
is he entirely consistent with himself, for he says : " God 
is the Ultimate, manifested in nature; at the beginning of all 
things God was." Lao-tse is a mystic but he mentions 
God ^ only as posterior to a finite principle ; he does not 
teach metempsychosis nor the doctrine of illusion, whereas 
Chuang says : " When the real awakening comes it may be 
that life will be found to have been a dream, Confucius a 
dream, I myself a dream — or is the dream reality? I 
dreamed I was a butterfly, but woke and found that it was 
I ; or am I a butterfly who dreams that it is Chuang ? What 

iln his Tao-Teh-King (if it is his), he derives being from not- 
being, that is from the Absolute to be described only by negations 
(it is the .Unknowable). 



262 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

is? What seems? And yet betweeri butterfly and man 
some barrier exists; a change of form, that is all." It is 
not impossible, though improbable, that some Brahmanistic 
thought had already filtered through to China, as Mr. Lionel 
Giles has suggested.^ 

The China of Mencius and Chuang was no longer the 
China of Lao-tse and Confucius. Foreign elements were 
appearing in the state. Changes were taking place even in 
clothes and equipment that would have shocked Confucius. 
Prime ministers, even emperors, were half-breeds. The 
emperor who died in 425 b. c. was not only half Tartar by 
birth but he married a Tartar, so that his children were any- 
thing but Chinese. Wu-ling (325-299 b. c.) introduced the 
Tartar dress and boots and cavalry into China. And along 
with boots and war-horses entered demoralizing ideas. It 
was a time of political and intellectual life. Materialism, 
already latent in the doctrines of Confucius, who ignored 
all spirituality, was now not only recognized but proudly 
proclaimed to be the only true philosophy. It was against 
this materialism that Mencius raised his voice. He could no 
longer cite Confucius as an authority; to many, Confucius 
was not only a dream but a nightmare. By only a few 
was his ipse dixit accepted without dispute. All opinions 
got a hearing and it is to the lasting credit of the Chinese 
that in the long run the optimist and moralist prevailed 
against the pessimist and hedonist. It is to Mencius that 
the Chinese owe the final triumph of the Confucian view 
that man is naturally virtuous and that, for this reason, 
righteousness is a religious aim. Mencius does not usually 
speak of God (Shang Ti) but of T'ien (Heaven) ; yet once 
he says : " Even though wicked, man may sacrifice to Shang 
Ti, if he fast and purify himself." 

Mencius was one of a number of brilliant scholars of his 
age. But there was little accomplished for Chinese religion 
after his day save in the philosophy of religion and the best 

"^Musings of a Chinese Mystic in Wisdom of the East series. 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA II 263 

work here was done under the influence of Buddhism. Tao- 
ism shows a steady decline to the unintelligent hocus-pocus 
called by that name ever since. Imported Buddhism exerted 
for certain seasons a profound influence upon the spiritual 
life of the more educated classes. Philosophy of native 
sort was still tinged with classicism, but in so far as it di- 
verged from this was at its best in a sort of Epicureanism. 
This system, the most original philosophical system of China, 
was a materialistic monism, elaborated in thirty books and 
eighty-five chapters by Wang Ch'ung, who was born in 27 
A. D. and died circa 97. Several of his works are lost, but 
his Lung-Heng or philosophical essays survive. He is an 
eclectic philosopher, an admirer of Confucius, whom he yet 
criticizes freely, and he bases his principles of philosophy on 
the old theory of the Yang and Yin, yet not as leading to a 
dualistic explanation of the universe. Both the heavenly 
and earthly " fluids " are material. There is here no spir- 
itual correlate to the Yang, no Tao, and no supreme Reason. 
All natural phenomena are explicable from natural causes. 
Heaven and earth were originally one vapour, as is taught 
by the old philosophers, who say that the Great One divided 
into heaven and earth. When chaos ended, what was pure 
and light became heaven ; the turbid and heavy became earth 
and ocean. The mixture of their fluids produced man. 
Air and fiery ether represent Yang; earth and water, Yin. 
The two elements are therefore male fire and female water, 
one represented by sun, stars, and spirit or mind, the other 
by water and its sediment (earth) and body. Heaven, like 
earth, does all things spontaneously and without volition; 
hears no prayers, rewards no virtue, does not live like a 
king (as God), cannot feel, see, or hear. When the Yang 
fluid comes forth spontaneously, plants grow ; when it ebbs 
and Yin increases, they wither and die. Man's soul and 
mind are one and one with the " fluid of heaven, which is 
inactive consciously but active unconsciously." The fu- 
sion of the male fiery and female watery fluids, heaven and 
earth, makes man; so man is said to have a father in the 



264 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

sky; but in reality the fluids crystallize together to make 
man ; it is as when, so to speak, ice is made ; so man is crys- 
tallized, and melts again into those fluids; the vital spirit 
is represented by, or resides during life in, the blood; the 
body represents the earth fluid. Ghosts are not deceased 
beings but warm airs, parts of the fiery fluid without body. 
No man can know the future or prolong his life. Fate is 
determined by the amount of fiery fluid he has in his make- 
up ; it is one with star-fluid, so astrologers can tell about it. 
Rain comes from earth ; it is not a gift of heaven. Virtue 
is an excess of heavenly fluid, a fluid which seems to tend to 
virtue (so the ancients tell us). Man is not naturally good 
or bad, as older philosophers argue ; ^ his virtue depends on 
the amount of his heavenly fluid. 

According to Wang Ch'ung, the vital fluid (Yang) em- 
braces the five elements, water, fire, wood, metal, and earth, 
which form the five organs, heart, liver, stomach, lungs, and 
kidneys, and these are the seats of the five virtues, benevo- 
lence, justice, propriety, knowledge, and truth. Interesting 
as is this philosophy in its denial of spiritual life, it adds 
nothing religiously to the denials of former centuries. It is 
rather a negation of religion than a religious form, and in its 
dogma that the heaven-fluid possesses truth and knowledge 
as well as the other virtues, it is not very logical. These 
virtues, however, appear only in the "hearts of the sages," 
not in heaven itself. 

In the eleventh century, under Buddhistic influence, there 
arose a nature-philosophy, Sing-Li, propounded by Chou- 
Tun-i, who also accepted the Yang and Yin antithesis but 
sought to discover an ultimate principle for both. His dis- 
ciple, Chu Hi ( 1 130-1200 A. D.), besides his literary activ- 
ities, occupied himself with the same philosophical problem 

1 Alfred Forke, Lun-Heng (Leipzig, 1907) ; he has compared at 
length Lucretius, v. 4,39-4A9', 485-493> etc., and the parallel in the 
materialistic Carvaka of India. See also the same writer's essays 
on Yang Chu and the Chinese sophists in the Journal of the Peking 
Oriental Society, vii, and of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic 
Society, xxxiv. 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA II 265 

and solved it by making the Ultimate, which to Chou-Tun-i 
was either active or passive, as Yang and Yin, an incor- 
poreal intelligence or supreme Reason, Li, immanent in the 
universe, but having matter coeval beside it. Soul, con- 
scious existence after death, and a personal God are denied, 
though Chu Hi used the word God, probably by a figure of 
speech (" God raises up the hero to overcome the calamities 
which God sends down "). Since there is in this Neo-Con- 
fucianism, which was influential in Japan,^ a rational prin- 
ciple in all things and this is moral (moral ideas are qualities 
of the Ultimate), the system forms a religion of a sort, 
though not wholly native, for all metaphysical religious ideas 
of this period are affected by the speculations of Buddhism. 
Taoism was for centuries the accepted religion of China. 
But Lao's Taoism had degenerated into a search for the 
elixir of life and the philosopher's stone; even in life one 
may acquire Tao. Beguiled by the hope of these valuables 
many emperors gave protection and encouragement to the 
Taoist doctors who practised alchemy and preached doc- 
trines which they claimed were derived from Lao-tse, to 
whom sacrifice was made in the second century of our era. 
Even as early as the third century b. c. the " First Em- 
peror " (246-210 B. c.) fitted out a naval expedition to find 
the land of perpetual youth and discover its secrets. At that 
tim.e the Taoist magicians already professed ability to live 
like gods, see into the future, rule natural forces, etc. Wu 
Ti, an emperor of the first century b. c, became the intel- 
lectual slave of these charlatans. Soon after this Buddhism 
began to influence Taoism,^ which in the fourth century a. d. 
invented or borrowed new gods and in course of time 

^ Known there as Shushi ; it was complemented by the Neo-Con- 
fucian School of Wang-Yang-Min (1472-1528). Neo-Confucianism 
was a synthesis of Buddhism and Confucianism. 

2 Buddhism may even have affected the Shu King (as it now is). 
Compare in this work : " Put away all selfishness and then you 
may^ say * I have accumulated merit.' " The same King says that 
" Crimes are registered above," but does not explain how ; probably 
only in the " mind of God " at that period. 



2(£ THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

adopted from the Buddhists the doctrine of future punish- 
ments and imitated its external features, idols, temples, and 
monasteries. Fa-Hien in 399 a. d. made a pilgrimage to 
India and brought back Buddhist texts. The first Taoist 
pope, imitated from Buddhism, was Chang Tao-ling, said 
to have been born in 34 a. d., who discovered the secret of 
longevity and at the age of sixty " made a pill, swallowed 
it, and became younger than ever." It was he who, still 
youthful in the second century, founded a semi-clerical State 
with a religious discipline based on self-humiliation before 
the higher powers and on confession of sins. 

It may well have been that then as now there were sin- 
cere seekers of truth as well as seekers of life-elixirs among 
the Taoist recluses who withdrew to the solitudes to practise 
piety and soul-strength by means of silence and breath- 
exercises. Some of them resemble the Yogins of India. 
But in general they practised magic not meditation. Just 
how far back or how deep was the influence of the Bud- 
dhism which made such headway in the centuries following 
the Christian era, it is difficult to say. Legend says that a 
statue of Buddha was brought to the capital 122 b. c. and 
that missionaries arrived 67 a. d. At any rate, missionaries 
came in 147 a. d. and by the fourth century a. d. the ritualism 
of Buddhism had made a lasting appeal to the common peo- 
ple. The religion itself, its spiritual hope and sentimental 
tone, contrasted favourably with the formality of Confucian- 
ism and with the mysticism of Taoism. But the fortunes of 
both sects varied with court favour. Confucianism flourished 
side by side with Buddhism in the fourth century, when 
monasteries began to be established. Under the Eastern 
Tsin dynasty Buddhism largely prevailed (till 420 a. d.). 
Persecution followed, but in 502 a. d. the emperor Wu Ti 
was so de\'Oted to this religion that, like the later Japanese 
rulers, he gave up a throne to enter a monastery. Hundreds 
of Buddhist works were imported in the sixth century and 
Taoists who would not worship Buddha were slain. Later, 
both Taoists and Buddhists became disliked, partly because 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA II 267 

of the quackery of the one and the evil behaviour of the 
other sect, whose nuns were not very exemplary; though 
again in the seventh century, when Hiuen-tsang went to 
India to procure Buddhist works, Buddhism flourished 
alongside of Taoism. At this time Lao-tse was formally 
canonized and his supposed works were made part of the 
State examination, while both Taoists and Buddhists were 
permitted to become State officials, and even the Nestorians 
were received at court and a church was built for them. 
T'ai-tsung not only received them and heard their doctrines, 
but he had some of the sacred books of the Christians trans- 
lated for the State examination. Finally, however, in the 
ninth century, after the Buddhists had been persecuted by 
the Confucianists in the eighth century, the Taoists, who 
at that time had been undergoing a new sentence of banish- 
ment, were again recalled, and succeeded in having not only 
the Buddhists but all other foreigners put under the ban as 
irreligious teachers. All Buddhist establishments, more than 
fifty thousand, were broken up and the Buddhists, Mani- 
chaeans, and Nestorians were " sent to their own lands." 
After this, though the Buddhists were again tolerated, the 
Taoists had no rivals save the Confucianists till the Mongols 
began to favour Lamaism. Marriage was practised by the 
Taoist priests till the time of the Sung (960-1127), but the 
Taoists were otherwise favoured by this dynasty ^ and for 
that reason were obnoxious to the conquerors of the Sung; 
but they became powerful again in the fourteenth century 
under the Yuan Mongols; and the Ming dynasty (1368- 
1643) ^t least treated them with consideration, though 
forcing them to pass examination in the Confucian classics 
if they wished to enter public life. In the next century, 
however, they were regarded as imposters by the emperor 

1 The first Sung emperor opposed the Buddhists, but contem- 
porary rulers favoured them and began to build at this time pagodas 
to preserve relics of Buddha. A few of these edifices had been 
built previously, but most of the existing pagodas date from the 
tenth century. Kublai Khan, the first Mongol emperor, vi^as strongly 
attached to Buddhism. 



26^^ THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

and were literally laughed out of court. Later Ming em- 
perors even treated them as heretics. 

It is from this later period, perhaps from the sixteenth 
century, that we have the chief Taoist literature of today, 
the Book of Rewards and Punishments and the Book of 
Secret Blessings. The former reckons out how many years 
are to be deducted from a man's life for every fault, twelve 
years down to a hundred days, according to its magnitude, 
and embodies the ethical code, to practise which leads to 
quiescence on the part of " recorders of crime," as certain 
spirits are called. The rules of this code are partly moral, 
partly practical ; on the whole their ethical quahty is unim- 
peachable. Thus, from the first of these books : 

Thou shalt not steal ; thou shalt not break up marriages ; thou 
shalt not kill for gain ; thou shalt not envy, nor covet ; nor suck 
the brains of others; nor injure living things, except as enjoined 
for sacrifice ; thou shalt not destroy men's tools ; nor open flood- 
gates, nor laugh at deformity; nor bury an effigy to inflict an 
incubus upon a man; thou shalt not murmur against Heaven, 
nor against rain, nor against wind; nor give alms and then 
regret it. Honour thy parents; wives, respect your husbands; 
women, be gentle and obedient. Man, do not rage on the first 
day of the month; nor dance and sing on the last day of the 
month or year ; ^ do not weep or spit toward shooting stars nor 
toward the north pole (which is the door of heaven), nor point 
out a rainbow ; be virtuous, humane to animals ; pity widows 
and orphans and all those who are unfortunate; rejoice with 
them that rejoice; help the needy; do not boast; do not swear 
to thy innocence before the gods, nor give bad food to the 
people, nor love wine and dissipation; live with thy wife in 
harmony and do not dispute angrily with those near akin. 

The most popular moral or religious book with all sects 
in China is the somewhat similar Book of Secret Blessings. 
With injunctions like those above as to honouring parents, 
helping the needy, saving those in danger, feeding the hun- 

1 Because the hearth-spirit ascends to heaven to register man's 
faults and good deeds on the last day of every month and the spirits 
of Heaven and Earth examine the virtues and sins of each on the 
last day of the year, with a view to rewards and penalties. 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA II 269 

gry, etc., it lays especial weight on kindness to animals: 
"Abstain from shedding blood; do not tread upon insects 
on the path; burn a candle in your window to give light to 
the traveller; do not spread nets to catch birds, nor poison 
fish and reptiles." It also inculcates the rule of devoting 
one's wealth to the good of one's fellow-men ; of loving good 
and fleeing from evil ; of charity toward all. 

How much the Taoist pantheon has inherited from remot- 
est antiquity and how much invented or borrowed is difficult 
to say. The Taoists regard the stars as divine beings, espe- 
cially the Great Bear, and generally deify natural phenom- 
ena such as thunder, lightning, and ocean. They worship 
dragons, who cause rain and convulsions of nature. They 
have also, as already noticed, deified men as patron gods of 
occupation, a god of scholars, a god of soldiers, etc., who 
lived and died as common mortals hundreds of years ago. 
Some spirits grant riches, others old age, happiness, etc. 
Stars in the Great Bear are especially honoured; all stars 
are divine, sublimated essences of things. The planets rep- 
resent the five elements, fire, water, earth, wood, and metal. 
Jupiter, owing to its long cycle, is revered by astrologers. 
The Taoist religion today is a State-religion and the third 
section of the sacrifices, which contains many Taoist ele- 
ments, is a reflection both of old Sinic divinities and of the 
more modern cult of "benefactors" and stars.^ Genii and 
demons swarm everywhere. They bring reports to heaven 
of man's acts below. They pluck a man in examinations or 

1 The " third section " of spirits contains twelve sorts of deities to 
whom sacrifice must be offered at least once a year : Physicians of 
the past ; Kuan Ti, the War-god ; Wang Chung, a star, once a man, 
as god of scholars; the North Pole, as throne of Heaven; the 
Ruler of Fire; Cannon gods, worshipped by the military; gods of 
walls and moats; the god of the Eastern Mountain Summit (his 
temple is north of the altar of the sun; eighty-six mountains in all 
receive sacrifice) ; the four dragons; the female divinity of naviga- 
tion, together with male river gods ; gods of the soil, together with 
the god of architecture ; and gods of storehouses. Imaginary spirits 
are the Unicorn, Phoenix, and Dragon, portentous apparitions, wor- 
shipped to get sons, rain, etc. 



270 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

pluck out his eyes or cause eclipse and pestilence. Some 
of these are new in form but the idea is old. Borrowed 
from Confucianism, a rival of God (Shang-Ti), is Yii- 
Huang-Shang-Ti as Supreme Lord or (as some say) next in 
power to the Three Holy Ones, a triad borrowed from Bud- 
dhism and arbitrarily interpreted as Lao, the father of the 
race, and the cosmic principle.^ There is also another triad 
called San Kuan, which makes a trinity of '' three rulers " 
(of heaven, earth, and water). The Buddhistic Avalokitesh- 
vara was still portrayed as a young man with a moustache in 
the eighth century ; he is now sometimes male and sometimes 
a goddess called Kuan-yin (goddess of mercy). Buddha 
himself has become "Mother Buddha" (in Wu-tai). The 
god of future punishment is Yen-lo-wang; he is said to be 
the Hindu Yama.^ 

The Taoists have developed both astrology and the sci- 
ence of prognostication. They draw auguries from obser- 
vation of all the changes of nature. Phenomena of this sort 
are carefully mentioned in the Li-Ki and their interpreta- 
tion was made a science during the Han dynasty. All of- 
ficials have orders to observe and report extraordinary phe- 
nomena, colour of sky, storm, eclipse, rainbow, heat, and 
rain (some stars influence wind; some influence rain). 
Gales and earthquakes are recorded as auguries, also all 
monstrosities, unnatural births, etc. A hen with three legs, 
for example, indicates that there will be undue female influ- 
ence about the throne. Cases of resurrection are reported 
as omens. Chance " words of boys " are oracular ; beasts 
and birds, above all " wind and water," Feng Shui, or Ti 
Li (geomancy) are means employed to this end. Feng Shui 
is a science by itself ; no house, no grave, no business, can 

1 See Legge, Religions of China, London, 1880, p. 167L The or- 
iginal three are the Three jewels (Triratna). 

2 The ignorant Buddhists of China worship Fuh and Poosa 
(Buddha and Bodhisattva) as God, the latter being " more sym- 
pathetic," the former higher in rank. Poosa is virtually God to the 
lower classes, but . Kuan- Yin sometimes replaces him. Edkins, op. 
ctt., p. gyi. Compare Kuannon in Japan, below, p. 299. 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA II 27I 

be begun without it. Even those not Taoists do not dare to 
act without a Feng Shui magician. 

Such is the popular reHgion of today. Officially, both 
Taoism and Confucianism are State religions, but while the 
latter is the religion of the learned, the former is both the 
real religion of the mass of the people and the religion with- 
out which even the learned cannot get along. But Confu- 
cianism alone has the influence imparted by the possession 
of a literature which is virtually holy writ. Taoists have 
no intellectual standing. The Buddhists, like the Taoists, 
get their adherents only from the uneducated. Even the 
Taoists and Buddhists themselves are said to reject all 
teachings which (they think) are inconsistent with Confu- 
cianism. " Ever since 631 a. d., when the Confucian classics 
became the sole subjects for competitive examination, they 
have been the main study of every generation. ... By all 
who are educated, Confucius, the Perfect Sage and Throne- 
less King, is worshipped as a god." ^ 

In reviewing Chinese religion, it is obvious that after 
Buddhistic influence begins we are dealing with a mixed 
creed and cult and in estimating the Chinese for themselves 
we must judge them before Dharmaraksha and Kashyapa 
fulfilled the dream of the white horse and its rider.^ It is 
to the Buddhists that the Chinese owe their introduction to 
religious philosophy. Before the advent of Buddhist sects 
we have much ethics and a little metaphysics, but no pro- 
found philosophy of religion until Bodhidharma, in apostolic 
succession from Buddha, laid the foundation of the Zen 
school of religious Contemplation. This and other Buddhist 
sects, of China and Japan, will be more conveniently 

1 Douglas, C onfucianism and Taoism, London, 1887. By the Con- 
fucian classics is meant here (as often) not the classics as Shu, in 
distinction from the Canon, but, in general, the nine books (JP'ive 
King and Four Shu) of canonical authority (see p. 224). 

2 Arthur Lloyd in his Creed of Half Japan, London, 1911, com- 
pares Rev. vi. 2, composed, he says, a year after the Chinese emperor 
saw the vision (of Buddhist invasion) fulfilled in 67 a. d. The 
future Avatar of Vishnu, for that matter, will also appear riding 
on a white horse 1 



272 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

treated together under Japanese religion ( below ).^ It re- 
mains to inquire whether other religions affected the Chi- 
nese. Babylonian influence of the unknown past may be 
rejected as too hypothetical to be probable. Tartar influ- 
ence probably added little; it adversely affected pure Chi- 
nese thought. Mohammedanism and Mazdaism both 
reached China in the seventh century. The former is still 
represented by a local body of believers but neither of these 
religions of themselves made any real impression upon the 
Chinese people. Manichaean beliefs entered China without 
any lasting effect in the ninth century. Jewish teaching is 
said to have reached China during the Han period and in 
the twelfth century; a small Jewish colony (largely Mo- 
hammedan) is still to be found at Kaifungfu.^ 

The Nestorian Christians, whom we have seen strongly 
entrenched under imperial favour in the seventh century, 
appear to have left not only a famous monument ^ but many 
disciples, who under subsequent persecution became absorbed 
either into Mohammedanism or into the secret society known 
as the Religion of Immortality (literally " the pill of immor- 
tality"). They believe in a ''Teacher from above," who 
was reported to have lived on earth seven centuries before 
(i.e. before 755 a. d.). As early as the third century Barde- 
sanes reports Christians in China. A few Japanese cult- 
words, like ansoko for incense, are of western (Parthian) 
origin. Eating of meat and marriage of priests may be due 
to Christian example. Some knowledge of Christianity may 
have come into China before the seventh century, but if so it 
was probably without much effect. What is highly prob- 

1 The tenets but not the sects themselves were transmitted to Japan 
in the case of the Bidon, Nehan, Chiron, and Soron sects. 

2 Some of the modern sects called Buddhist are really Taoist 
mixed with other elements. The " Bread and Tea " sect, for exam- 
ple is a form of Wu-Wei (Do-nothing). It embraces a number of 
sincere opposers of idolatry who as vegetarians offer the gods only 
tea and bread. They worship Heaven and Earth, the emperor and 
the religious teacher. 

3 Saeki, The Nestorian Monument in China, London, 1916. 



RELIGIONS OF CHINA II 273 

able, however, is that the persecution of Wu-tsung in 845 
(Hke that of Timur, in the fourteenth century) drove into 
hiding the two thousand foreign missionaries then living in 
China, many of whom were Christian. Before this per- 
secution the Nestorians may have affected the Chinese 
Buddhist sects, as they would by then have affected 
Japanese scholars, who were studying in China in the same 
eighth century.^ Yet it is easy to exaggerate the im- 
portance of this supposititious influence. Chinese and Japa- 
nese analogues to Christian teaching are quite explicable 
without recourse to the hypothesis that they were bor- 
rowed. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Chinese Classics, translated by J. Legge, in the Sacred Books 
of the East, Confucian texts, iii, xvi, xxvii, xxviii ; Taoistic, 
xxxix, xl. 

S. Wells Williams, A History of China, New York, 1901. 

Friedrich Hirth, The Ancient History of China, New York, 
1908. 

J. J. M. De Groot, The Religious System of China, Leyden, 
1872-1910; The Religion of the Chinese, New York, 1910. 

James Legge, The Religions of China, London, 1880; The Life 
and Work of Mencius, London, 1889. 

Herbert A. Giles, Religions of Ancient China, London, 1905; 
Chuang-Tzu, Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer, Lon- 
don, 1889. 

J. Edkins, Religion in China, London, 1878. Brief account of 
the three religions. 

W. E. Soothill, The Three Religions of China, London, 1913. 

R. K. Douglas, Confucianism and Taoism, London, 1887. 

M. M. Dawson, The Ethics of Confucianism, New York, 191 5. 

E. J. Eitel, Handbook for the Student of Chinese Buddhism, 
Hongkong, 1870. 

1 The great Chinese empire of the first century of our era gave 
opportunity to come in contact with the far West, which an em- 
bassy of 120 B. c. had already made known. This embassy notes the 
use of stamped silver coins and horizontal writing in Judea and 
Persia. ^ The Nestorian monument, originally unveiled in 781, was 
found in 1625. It mentions the fact that the Virgin was born in 
Ta Ch'in (Judea). 



274 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

A. Forke, Lun-Heng, Philosophical Essays of Wang Ch'ung, 

Leipzig, 1907-11. 
On Yang Chu and Mih, see Journal Peking Oriental Society, 

iii. 3, 203. 
P. Y. Saeki, The Nestorian Monument in China, London, 1916. 



CHAPTER SIXTEEN 

RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 
SHINTOISM AND BUDDHISM 

The present inhabitants of Japan (Nippon, " Sunriseland," 
from the Chinese " Chipangu") are in part racially allied 
with the Chinese, being of Mongolian origin, possibly from 
two branches of that race. But the earliest religion is more 
akin to that of the Malay race. In both there is the same 
fanciful deification of nature. There is a superficial re- 
semblance to the cult of the Ainus. The two peoples, to- 
gether with certain troglodytes, were in the same localities 
for centuries, and though the Ainu are apparently of differ- 
ent stock and were antagonistic to the invading Japanese, 
they shared many religious traits with the latter, as indeed 
would be indicated by their common use of the Kamui rods, 
probably because they were originally on about the same 
plane of culture.^ 

Our first knowledge of old Japan, its culture, myths, and 
religion, is derived from two sets of official documents, writ- 
ten in Japanese and Chinese, and dating from 712 and 720 
A. D., respectively, called Kojiki (Records) and Chronicles 
(Nihongi). They were written for the purpose of preserv- 
ing tradition but with a distinct tendency to inculcate the 

^When we first hear of the Japanese they were still emerging 
from the stone age, using both metal and stone weapons, being in 
part hunters and fishermen and in part agriculturists. They raised 
rice, barley, millet, and beans; used horses only for riding, had no 
architecture, no vehicles, no cattle, no cotton, and no sake or tea. 
Their first notion of writing was derived, probably in the third cen- 
tury A. D,, from Korea, that is, eventually, from the Chinese, to 
whom the Japanese owe the beginning of higher culture. For the 
Ainus, see p. 46f. 

275 



276 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

divine nature of the imperial house, and they are affected by 
Chinese influence throughout. As history they have no 
more value than the Hindu Puranas, which were written 
about the same time, or the Chinese Shu King, which also 
combines myth and tradition with useful implicit teaching, 
but their general contents is valuable since they preserve old 
tales which reflect popular belief. The later of these works 
first recognized prayers directed to the ancestors of the em- 
perors, who, according to the tradition established by these 
histories, are descendants of the *' heavenly king " Jimmu 
(Tenno), the great-grandson of Ninigi, reputed grandson of 
the sun-deity. The date of Jimmu is traditionally 660 b. c. 
There is no reason to believe that this is correct ; but it an- 
swers the same purpose as the assignment of the foundation 
of Rome to the year 753 b. c. The date of the empress 
Jingo, the warlike queen who, in the course of her long life 
of a hundred years, " conquered Korea," is traditionally 
about 200 A. D. Her son Ojin, who was afterwards deified 
as " god of war " under the name Hachiman. is said to have 
died in 310 a. d. But the earliest certain date in Japanese 
history is 461 a. d. 

The religion of this early period had at first no name. 
There was no need of a designation until it became neces- 
sary to distinguish it from the other religions which soon 
submerged its primitive character. It was then called by a 
Chinese name Shen-tao, " Way of the Spirits," or in Japa- 
nese Shinto, afterwards translated by Kami no michi, " Way 
of the Superior" (powers). The native histories do not 
pretend that this religion was inspired or revealed. The 
complete system of Chinese ethics was brought into Japan 
at an early date, perhaps the fifth century a. d. Its special 
religious effect was to emphasize ancestor worship, which 
at this early time was thus made a part of the official Shinto 
cult. 

In its more original form Shinto has no cult of ancestors. 
Such a cult depends on the realization of the family, the 
preservation of family names, and the belief in a continued 



RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 277 

existence hereafter of one's ancestors as powers capable 
of affecting the welfare of the living. Of all this there is no 
trace in primitive Shinto.^ 

The belief in regard to the soul and ancestor seems to 
have been that found in many other cases of parallel cul- 
ture. The fact that the Mikado is divine as descendant of 
the Sun does not show that common people may boast of 
this descent, and so the fact that Mikados and other great 
men, scholars, kings, and heroes, live revered hereafter does 
not show that common people live after death, still less that 
they are worshipped. The Polynesians, the Africans, and 
even the Eskimos made a distinction between such people 
as had a future life and such as had none. Shinto, till in- 
fluenced by Buddhism and Confucianism, seems to be quite 
inarticulate regarding the future. There was certainly no 
heaven or hell for the vulgar mass to go to ; they were imag- 
ined as living underground for a time and food was given 
to them to prevent their being angry and becoming spiteful 
demons; but there is no indication that this implied a cult 
of ancestors or that the ancestors were thought to remain 
alive as potent spirits. Probably there was no thought 
about them at all. Many people in a primitive state trouble 
themselves not in the least as to a hereafter and have no 
fixed notion as to whether they will live long beyond the 
grave or not. The Japanese conception of spirit is itself 
faint. As is seen in the legends, the early Kami are powers 
as phenomena, and so with human beings, when the living 
phenomenon passed the man passed. As is said of the amor- 
phous first gods, " they had these names and died." Distin- 
guished people may have two souls, a rough and a gentle 
soul, and they may continue to exist ; but the vulgar go down 
to the earth and perish, unless perhaps they appear as birds 
or snakes and so continue a fresh phenomenal life, but even 

^ Most Japanese scholars and some Europeans, misled by the later 
faith, teach that Shinto was from the beginning " pure ancestor wor- 
ship." Saito in his useful History of Japan in China, London, 1912, 
p. 26, even translates Kami by "ancestors." 



278 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

this is an unusual occurrence. The soul-idea (tamashii, 
"ball of wind") is connected primarily with breath; death 
was called '* breath-departure," and soul was " wind-ball." 
There are no prayers for the welfare of the dead : they are 
not invoked. Human sacrifice made at the tomb of royal 
persons has sometimes been cited in support of the " pure 
ancestor worship "of Shinto. But on the contrary, this 
custom, w^hich is found in other lands in exactly parallel 
circumstances, proves only that the extraordinary people 
thus honoured were supposed to retain their royal state 
hereafter, and as they were all divine beings by virtue of 
their descent from the Sun, the practice indicates merely 
that royal persons were divine enough to survive. The 
Manchu Tartars and some of the Chinese followed this cus- 
tom and also confined it to the nobles. According to tradi- 
tion, more than a hundred male and female attendants were 
thus buried with one Japanese empress (before history be- 
gins, perhaps in the third century), and the burial of the 
living with the dead continued till 646 a. d. ; but the substi- 
tution of eSigies for living victims soon set aside the barbar- 
ous practice, though the substitution itself retained the idea. 
Finally, even the use of effigies v.as discontinued, as Bud- 
dhistic burning, till the recent revival of Shinto, took the 
place of the older burial (about 700 a. d.), even in the case 
of emperors. The older Shinto regarded ever}i:hing con- 
nected with death as imparting pollution and recognized no 
religious funeral rites. In the early histories, " the state 
of the dead in general is nowhere alluded to." ^ Florenz has 
pointed out that the general practical distinction between 

1 Chamberlain, T. A. S. Japan, 1906, Appendix p. Ivii. For the un- 
derworld, Yomi, separated b\- a hill from earth and somewhat like 
earth (in having hills, houses, etc.), see ib. p. xlvi. The Bon-odori, 
or lantern feast of All-Souls celebrated in July, is a Buddhist not a 
Shinto festival. At this time the souls of the dead return to earth. 
Mourners wear white clothes and white sandals are given the dead 
for the journey to the next world, according to modern usage. Over 
the "land of gloom," Yomotsukuni, presides Izanami, as a sort of 
spirit of death- 



RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 279 

Shintoism and Buddhism with the mass of Japanese is that 
the chief joyous festivals are in honour of Shinto gods; but 
in mourning and death the people turn to Buddhism. 

All the early stories show that the sun-goddess was the 
supreme object of devotion, both to men and to gods. 
Deities preceding her and her contemporaries are fanciful 
figures without religious significance and perhaps due to 
foreign influence. The objects of religious regard and of 
mythical interest are, like the sun, the moon, fire, the light- 
ning (as dragon-sword), three water-gods, volcanoes, moun- 
tains, trees and animals ; but not ghosts. These phenomena 
are revered directly, as spiritually potent per se, not as con- 
taining spirits. In other words the earliest Japanese belief 
was pure naturism. At the same time lower spiritual beings 
are regarded as incorporate in earthly forms. But Fire, for 
example, is not a spirit of Fire but a phenomenal power, 
whose cult is still retained in the now tricky " fire-walking " 
and in the yearly fire-festival (Nov. 8), when fires are 
lighted in honour of the food-goddess, Inari. The wife of 
Ninigi underwent a fire-ordeal to prove her innocence. So 
Water is judge in the water-ordeal.^ 

Popular spirits, such as ogres, oni, and goblins with bird- 
claws, tengu (some fengti have temples), mountain genii 
{scnnin, in human form), represent phenomena though not 
themselves phenomena. Yet most of these, not worshipped 
but dreaded, are later creations than the early worshipped 
forms of nature. The first deities were nebulous forms, 
many being sexless, but they reflect a nature-cult. This is 
clear in the " earth-propitiation," Jishidzume, not to be ac- 
counted for by any ghost-worship. The Great Offering at 
the beginning of a reign, with its tasting of first fruits, is 
the chief Shinto ceremony. Though now for the Mikado 
alone, it was originally a general practice in which the wor- 
shipper joined the deity in the feast. Gratitude is shown ; 
it is not a religion of " perpetual fear " (as Lafcadio Hearn 

^The red-hot axe-ordeal is another fire-test; but the ordeal by 
boiling water is a later form. 



28o THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

calls it). Human and animal sacrifices were made direct 
to rivers and other gods, but without any idea of sprinkling 
with blood. Gift and bargain, and occasionally the scape- 
goat idea, are the sacrificial principles of Shinto. The gift 
was often a mere symbol of affectionate regard. 

In a history of religion, mythology serves no purpose 
except to illustrate religious ideas. It will be superfluous, 
therefore, to record the trivial and obscene tales of the gods 
of myth. What is imperative is that they should be recog- 
nized as mainly mythological, quasi historical, not as reli- 
gious. A brief outline of the story of creation shows that 
there was no idea of a creator-god as supreme deity; that 
the myth-gods who appear as progenitors of the race and 
land are not religiously important, since they merely appear 
as actors but receive no worship ; and that the host of octad 
gods are mere names, probably never recognized as divin- 
ities at all.^ The account of the first gods in the Kojiki is 
as follows : 

There were once two beings, male and female, who began 
of their own accord (not commanded to do so by a Supreme 
Being) to " invite " each other. First the female invited 
the male ; but this did not please him. Then he invited her, 
and she agreed with him to become the parents of Japan 
and other islands, the sun and other gods. Each of these 
two beings, on account of the " invitation," has the same pre- 
fix, izana, Izanagi, *' male who invites," Izanami, ^* female 
who invites." They carried out what they had planned ; but 
Izanami died in giving birth at last to the fire-god, and de- 
scending below earth became foul with corruption. Izanagi 

1 There are different sets of these gods-by-name. First, to ex- 
plain creation, are assumed such gods as Master-of-Heaven, High- 
august-producing-wondrous-deity, and, third, Divine-producing-won- 
drous-deity, who simply came into existence and died. There are 
others of this sort, who merely appear and die, till the advent of 
Izanagi and Izanami. Another set spring, chiefly in groups of eight 
(a Buddhistic holy number), from Izanagi's clothes, from the drops 
of blood shed when he kills the fire-god, and from the head and 
trunk of the fire-god, all octads being " gods " without real exist- 
ence. 



RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 281 

sought her and found her, but Izanami, though decomposed, 
was angry and he barely escaped to upper air again, where 
he slew the fire-god, from whose body came an octad of 
gods, and washed his eyes free of the filth of the place of 
dead. From his left eye came the Sun,^ from his right the 
Moon, from his nose Susanowo, the " violent '' god of 
rain or water, afterwards also of the underworld. In his 
" violent " and mischievous tricks he let fall, as it were, 
a number of gods of no account. He plagued his sister, 
the Sun, till she shut herself up in a cave, when, with the 
help of one of the, unaccountable, " gods without crea- 
tion " (in the first set of gods), he planned to make his sis- 
ter, the Sun, appear ; which he did by dancing obscenely till 
she looked out (reminiscence of sun-dance?^) to see why 
the gods were laughing, on which was shown to her her own 
reflection in a mirror and she was told that the gods had 
found another fairer sun. At this she came out and all was 
sunny again. When the gods, after banishing the " violent " 
one from heaven, because of his tricks, learned that earth 
was now quieted, the grandson of the Sun came down and 
secured constant peace by slaying all who opposed him. 
This was Ninigi, great-grandfather of Jimmu (above, 660 
B. c). The violent god also had human descendants, who 
lived in Idzumo. 

Out of all these myth-gods only the sun-deity, Ama- 
terasu (Omikami) and the food-goddess became objects of 
a cult. They all, whether good or bad, receive the appella- 
tion Kami, that is Superiors, a title conferred on any crea- 
ture, god or animal, who shows superiority to the common.^ 
From the Sun descend the emperors, called the Mi-Kado 
(kado, gate, or mika-to, "great place"), where justice is 

1 She is thus twice created (a mixture of myths). 

2 The Kagura or sacred dance at Ise and Nara may perpetuate this. 
The equinoctial (sun) festival called Higan (March 17-21) is, how- 
ever, a Buddhist celebration. 

3 Some of the gods have tails ; others, geographically remote, are 
known as "savage gods"; others become animals. Of the Kami, 
there are eighty myriads, or in one account eight hundred myriads. 



282 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

administered. She, as shown in the legend above, is not a 
creator-deity. It is centuries later before the god Masubi 
is poetically invoked as " creator of men." The shrines or 
temples, mia, of the pure Shinto faith celebrate only natural 
phenomena and natural forces. Most of these have only 
local festivals. A few are national and widely celebrated. 
Notably at Ise are found the " outer " and " inner " (Geku 
and Naiku) shrines of Food as goddess and Sun as goddess, 
respectively. The primitive functions of these divinities 
have been enlarged. To the Black Stone, Geku, thousands 
of diseased and maimed persons flock annually and cure 
themselves of disorders by making offerings.* They carry off 
the shavings of the peeled rods called Gohei, found also in 
the Ainu cult, which are now supposed to harbour spirits re- 
pugnant to evil (spirits). Tickets enclosing such shavings, 
Ise-o-harai, are used at the semi-annual festivals of purifi- 
cation. The ordinary Shinto temples contain no idols but 
Gohei, a mirror, a jewel, and sword, connected with the 
legend of the Sun and her " violent " brother, together with 
the usual gong, which is struck by the worshipper to attract 
the deity's attention. The visible mirror shown in Shinto 
shrines is a loan from the Buddhist Shingon sect. The true 
mirror is always concealed. This is the mirror which is a 
token (called the " spirit ") of the Sun. Possibly from imi- 
tation of Buddhist structures also may have been derived the 
Torii or gate-ways closely resembling the Hindu toraiia, 
which stand as gates to Buddhist topes in India. The tem- 
ple itself is comparatively late. At first the gods lived in a 
walled enclosure only. The first emperors lived in struc- 
tures which were both palace and temple. To the Sun and 
Food as goddesses are presented offerings of food and drink 
except at festivals, when the Shinto tokens, mirror, sword, 
jewel, and cloth are given to the shrine. Great care is taken 
not to pollute the food by the breath; the face is veiled. 
This cult is without doubt the earliest. The only general 
ritual in early days was the Ohoharahi or great purification, 
the object of which was twice a year to free the land of evil, 



RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 283 

either as disease or sin. All " foulness," incest or leprosy, 
for example, was deposited on a horse and washed off in 
the sea, the scape-goat idea. It is now regarded as a pro- 
pitiatory service. Similarly the ritual called Norito is now 
regarded as " laudation," but its original meaning was to 
ask for favours for a consideration (do tit des). The most 
ancient prayers contain both praise and statements regard- 
ing offerings made as quid pro quo. The Mikado celebrates 
an offering of first fruits and, according to later regulations, 
there are festivals consisting in imploring the gods ^ to 
give good crops, rites to invoke the water-god, the fire-god, 
etc., to do no harm. But there is no invocation of ancestors, 
nothing to indicate that the Japanese looked to ghosts to 
give them goods, as in China. 

Apart from nature-worship, there are innumerable traces 
of phallic worship in phallic symbols found everywhere. It 
is impossible to dissociate these symbols from those used in 
certain houses where the meaning is obvious, though an 
attempt has been made by Shintoists to soften their signifi- 
cance by the explanation that they merely represent power 
and so are used as admonitory warnings against trespass. 
They are still openly invoked by women wishing to succeed 
in their ancient profession. Temples, at Nikko and else- 
where, retain numerous Konsei or phalloi for their original 
purpose. 

Shinto had no organized priesthood ; the emperor was the 
religious head and acted as chief priest. Other priests were 
laymen acting as attendants of the shrine. There was no 
formal cult of animals (the fox-cult is late) ^ or of trees, but 

^Thus the harvest-god, Hitoshi, is implored to give rice, etc., and 
is rewarded with a horse, cock, and pig. All these gods in the 
** godless month of October " desert their shrines and go to the 
temple of Idzumo, except the deaf "god of luck," Ebisu. In Id- 
zumo is found today the purest Shinto. 

2Inari, the food-goddess (or food-god), originally rode a fox, 
as other gods ride stag, tartoise, etc. This fox became revered 
as itself a divine power, injuring crops. "Fox-possession" is a 
popular superstition; the victim must pay a priest to exorcise the 
demon-fox. 



284 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

both are occasionally revered as Kami.^ There is no totem- 
ism and no regular metempsychosis, but transmigration into 
animal forms is spoken of in legends. *' Possession," in this 
life, by foxes and demons is common. Buddhistic influence 
has made itself felt in the reckoning of myriads of gods, 
whose number as Kami is of course unlimited. It is said 
there are thirty-seven thousand Shinto shrines; but many 
of these are indifferently mia and tera (Buddhistic). It is 
difficult also to extract from common Shinto domestic serv- 
ice the unadulterated Shinto form. Each family now has 
at home a Kami-dana or god-shelf and, apart from this, 
Ihai or tablets to the ancestors (Chinese), to whom offer- 
ings are made and before whom a lamp (Buddhistic) is 
lighted. Handclapping and bowing in the ordinary service 
represent the nearest approach to " praise and prayer." No 
moral or spiritual blessings are asked for. At festivals 
music and dancing are ritualistic. Statues as idols 'have 
been taken over from Buddhism. 

Besides the lack of a priesthood, Shinto, until affected by 
Buddhism, had no idea of a heaven or hell, no idols (the 
mirror can scarcely be regarded as such) and no religiously 
moral code. There is in fact no ethical distinction possible 
in gods who are all equally gods whether good or bad. 
Intercourse with the gods was not the object of the simple 
divination practised by the Urabe (diviners). It was not 
to find out what was the gods' will, but to peer into the 
future, that recourse was had to dreams, to chance utter- 
ances, to the cracks, on the deer's shoulder-blade and tor- 
toise-shell, made by fire (Chinese model). Of deep religious 
feeling there is none in pure Shinto; the devotional act is 
perfunctory. Religious fervour entered Shinto with the 
worship of the Mikado, who concentrates in himself the 
intense loyalty of the people and is both loved as emperor 

1 Crabs and bugs found in certain parts of Japan are still popu- 
larly regarded as embodying the spirits of certain clans arid leaders 
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Star-worship, in distinction 
from sun-worship, is not an early Shinto trait. 



RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 285 

and adored as divine representative of the Sun. But all 
this is a new feature of Shinto. There were many centuries 
when the emperor was disregarded and looked upon as in no 
sense a quasi divinity. 

Although Shinto had no moral code, it recognized the 
virtue of courage and kindness as religiously endorsed by 
the character of the sun-deity. It also, in conjunction with 
the Chinese model, from which in this regard it is difficult 
to separate it, valued expressly the Chinese Five Relations, 
but laid the weight, not upon filial piety, as did its model, but 
upon loyalty. Magic, incest, and bestiality were regarded in 
general as offences against the Kami. Lying was not reli- 
giously offensive. Marriage, like burial, was without reli- 
gious sanction. Modern Japanese moralists, and so Mo- 
toori in the eighteenth century, defend the lack of a higher 
ethical code in Shinto by insisting that all moral systems 
imply a defective morality. The good old Japanese were 
so good that a moral code was superfluous. Under the 
influence of Chinese civilization was eventually evolved the 
Bushido " Way of Warriors," the code of chivalry. It re- 
flects the spirit of Japan at its ethical acme, though drawn 
as much from foreign as from purely native sources. This 
code taught loyalty to the emperor,^ inculcated obedience to 
authority, stoicism, and Giri, or duty (right) of revenge 
and of committing suicide, harakiri, on occasion. It taught 
also, by practice as well as teaching, that no means was too 
base to compass the end regarded as righteous. A life of 

1 The great code of Prince Shotoku, which {circa 600 a. d.) is 
based on a Chinese model, already insists on " paying due heed to 
the orders of the emperor." The " prince is like heaven, the sub- 
jects like earth." This code also insists on the (Bushido) rule of 
"politeness." Bushido, therefore, cannot be regarded as a Shinto 
product, but a combination representing the warriors' interpretation 
of rules of conduct, the base of which lies at the close of the pure 
Shinto period. It derives from the inherent character of the Japa- 
nese as modified by Chinese influence, but it did not attain its real 
meaning till the Tokugawa Shogunate put an end to feudalism and 
established Confucianism as interpreted by Chu Hi, the Chinese 
philosopher of the twelfth century, who inculcated obedience to the 
emperor as the first duty of man. 



286 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

debauchery, the sacrifice of women to such a life, lying and 
murder, if practised for the sake of one's chief, were not 
only blameless but obligatory. It descended also to points 
of refinement in dress, taught good manners, " politeness," 
and also emphasized the training of women, not treating her 
according to Western notions of chivalry but educating her 
to be courageous and self-controlled. It ignored chastity 
in men but insisted upon it in women, unless it was neces- 
sary to sacrifice it for loyalty's sake. This code arose in 
the Kamakura period (i 186-1339 ^- ^') ^^^ was that of the 
Samurai, the warriors of the Daimios or feudal lords, who 
in the person of the chief Daimio, the Shogun, held all the 
power in the middle ages. They used it to make a mere 
effigy of the Mikado, who was not restored to imperial power 
till the revolution of 1868. Buddhism contributed not a lit- 
tle to this end (see below), but there is no Shinto protest 
against the submergence of the emperor till quite late. To 
pass over the Buddhistic period for a moment, it will suffice 
to say that it was not till the fourteenth century that there 
was any attempt to revive pure Shinto, which for six cen- 
turies had been merged with Buddhism. Kitabatake Chika- 
fusa (1354 A. D.) made a first endeavour to reconstruct a 
pure Shinto, as opposed to the mixed Shinto composed of 
Shinto, Confucianism, and Buddhism. In the seventeenth 
century, Hayashi made another effort to free Shinto from 
Buddhism, but his own Shinto was largely Confucian.^ It 
was not till much later, under the influence of learned and 
patriotic leaders,^ that the present conception of Shinto 
came into being,^ an idealized Shinto, which discards other 

1 When, in 1603, the Tokugawa clan obtained supremacy, the edu- 
cated classes turned Confucian. 

2 Mabuchi (1697-1769), Motoori (1730-1801), Hirata (1776-1843) 
devoted themselves to the revival of " pure Shinto," frowned on 
the Shogunate, as on Buddhist, and Chinese learning, and sought 
truth in Japanese imperialism. This movement culminated in the 
disestablishment of Buddhism in 1868. 

•' The Yuitsu sect of Shinto started in the fifteenth century as a 
"Unitarian" (yui-itsu) sect in opposition to the mmture of Shinto 
and Buddhism called Ryobu (below). In its early form it was 



RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 287 

religions while it has little faith in its own mythology, but 
emphasizes what it considers the spirit of Shinto, that is, 
devotion to the native cult, especially as represented by the 
cult of the (Mikado) descendant of the Sun, withal as ex- 
pressing the emotion of patriotism, the feeling of national 
unity as a religious trait. The substitution for religion in 
Japan today is Shinto as Yamato-Damashii, the Spirit of 
Old Japan. 

Shinto now covers in popular usage a number of super- 
stitious and licentious practices, such as the Tenri- and 
Remmon-Kyo, founded by ignorant peasants, which go 
under the name of Shinto without having any real relation 
to it. Shinto has been largely affected by Buddhism, chiefly 
in a Chinese form of that faith. Japan itself has modified 
its borrowed religion and philosophy, but has originated 
little. No high ethical code and no native philosophic system 
arose among the Japanese, perhaps because Japan was in- 
fluenced from without before it reached the highest intel- 
lectual level. Its best philosophical work has been in syn- 
thetic harmonizing of precedent systems. 

Buddhism, as has already been indicated, meant much 
more to Japan than it did to China, where it impinged upon 
a long established religious culture. Into savage Japan in 
the sixth and seventh centuries of our era Buddhism sud- 
denly brought its whole paraphernalia of books, images, 
gods, saints, hells, heavens, and means of " salvation," and 
with its overpowering appeal to sense, feeling, and thought 
inundated the simple religious elements with which it came 
in contact. Most of the Japanese " gods " were only nat- 
ural powers regarded as supranatural ; many of the mytho- 
logical figures were rather " heroes " than gods, resembling 
such figures as Hiawatha among the American Indians. 
These were said to be mischievous spirits and were talked 
about as figures of a story rather than worshipped. Of 

merely a combination of old Shinto with Taoistic and other ele- 
ments. Geku-Shinto followed in the next century, promulgated by 
the priests of the Geku-shrine and mixed with Confucianism. 



288 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

man's place in the universe, of the universe itself as real or 
ideal, of a basis of religion, of a God, of any need of 
*' salvation," no Japanese had apparently thought at all 
until Buddhism arrived in Nippon. In the sixth century 
(583 A. D.) an image of Buddha was sent to Japan from 
Korea, where Buddhism had been at home for two cen- 
turies; but this formal introduction coincided with a do- 
mestic calamity which made the new religion, or rather the 
new god, for the religion was not yet understood, seem in- 
auspicious, and though the Koreans tried again to implant 
their faith in Japan it was without result. The real pro- 
moter of Buddhism in Japan was Prince Shotoku Taishi 
(593 A. D.), who first learned from a Korean priest the 
simple moral code of a Buddhist (not to steal, not to lie, 
not to get drunk, not to kill, and not to commit adultery). 
Shotoku was virtually the ruler of the country and used his 
power to erect many Buddhist images, build forty-six Bud- 
dhist temples, tera, domicile 1,385 Buddhist monks and 
nuns, and support with all the power of the court the now 
firmly established faith. He was also instrumental in pre- 
paring the Japanese code of laws referred to above, based 
on Chinese models.^ Buddhism thus introduced was an 
alien creed and its many missionaries felt the need of mak- 
ing the common people believe that it differed only in form 
from Shinto. For this purpose they had to adopt even- 
tually the same means which in the first centuries of our 
era led to the successful introduction of pagan gods and 
heroes and festivals into the Christian church as forms 
of Christian figures and feasts. Thus, as in America the 
Jesuits said to the Redskins, " Whom you worship as Manito 
we call God, worship Plim," so the Buddhist priest said to 
the Japanese barbarian, " Whom you worship as sun-deity 

1 In 605 A. D. there was already direct communication with Chinese 
Buddhism. In the laws of Shotoku it is said: "Honour the three 
jewels of Buddhism, the priests, the ritual, the founder. It is the 
highest religion in tVie world. Without Buddhism there is no way 
to make men turn from wrong to right." 



RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 289 

we call the Sun of righteousness and of being, Vairocana, 
worship Him." The union thus effected became known 
as Ryobu Shinto, the Twofold Way of the Gods. Other 
Buddhist figures, saints and incarnations, were as easily 
amalgamated and, what had been lacking in Japanese belief, 
a system of eschatology based on a moral code. 

As Buddhist power began to make itself felt, always un- 
der royal patronage, Buddhist practices replaced Shinto 
customs. Thus burial gave place to cremation and the 
slaughter of animals for sacrifices was discontinued in 
favour of floral and vegetable offerings. Buddhism ig- 
nored ancestor-worship, which by this time had become 
Shintoistic as it was Confucian. But the identification of 
Shinto gods with Buddhist spirits went far to heal this 
breach between the two religions. In 673-686 a. d. the 
emperor Temmu forbade the eating of flesh and made 
the Buddhistic service obligatory in every home. Under 
the empress Jito (690-702 a. d.) there were already 545 
Buddhist temples in Japan. For two centuries after this, 
Chinese culture and Chinese Buddhism were the objects of 
unstinted regard and deference on the part of the court. 
The reason was largely political. To maintain itself, the 
imperial power tried to break up the old government of 
clans and families and substitute a centralized power, after 
the model of China. It did away with the provincial pleni- 
potentiaries who had usurped, as the court looked at it, 
royal prerogatives. It appointed salaried officers to govern 
the provinces instead of hereditary heads of clans, who had 
received taxes and made their own government. Taxes 
wer€ now paid direct to the emperor and all land was de- 
clared to be owned by him. Court favour thus paid to the 
Chinese system included Chinese culture of all kinds and 
Buddhism as representative of Chinese religion. It was not 
foreseen that exactly this element was to prove deleterious 
to royal ambition.^ Undoubtedly the educated classes and 

1 As early as the eighth century a Buddhist priest, favourite of the 
empress-dowager, caused the exile of the emperor and endeavoured 



290 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

court circles, which included men of the highest attain- 
ments and often men who had had a prolonged training on 
Chinese soil, looked askance at the barbarous simplicity of 
Shinto and welcomed Buddhism both as an intellectual gain 
and as a political advantage. But the insidious arts of the 
Buddhist religious leaders, who were veritable pontiffs, pos- 
sessing their own estates and their own military adherents 
by the thousands, soon made themselves felt to the detri- 
ment of the very patrons who had established them in power. 
Not only were the weak-minded emperors persuaded that 
the way of salvation for prince and people was best fol- 
lowed by the retirement of the emperor from the world, 
whereby the Buddhists got rid of their rulers by the time 
these puppets began to feel themselves too royal (the age 
of religious retirement was at latest from forty to forty- 
five), but the overweening pride of these ecclesiastics flung 
into the field again and again armies which, when an emperor 
proved obdurate, attacked and subdued the royal forces and 
brought the power of the emperor to naught. Moreover, 
when not contending with the throne, one sect would fight 
another whenever the objectionable sect needed to be re- 
pressed. The monasteries were in short armed camps of 
religious fanatics and potential traitors from the moment 
they arrived at power to the moment when they were sup- 
pressed. It was they who, as religious leaders, influenced 
and encouraged the Daimios and Shogun '* leaders of ar- 
mies " to resist the centralizing effect of imperial preroga- 
tives, until first the Fujiwara^ family (670-1050 a. d.) and 
then others, the Taira and Minamoto families, of more mili- 
tary character, reduced the Mikado to a mere efiigy. The 
emperor Shirakawa ^ (1073-1087 a. d.), who finally had to 
invite the Minamoto clan to defend him against the priests 

to place himself upon the throne. He was prevented only by the 
courage of one man who got from a Shinto shrine an " oracle " 
forbidding the act. 

1 The ancestor of the Fujiwaras descended from heaven and the 
family is said to rank with that of the emperor in age and honour. 

2 This emperor robbed his treasury to build temples. Under him 



RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 291 

and thus inaugurated the dynasty of this clan, complained 
that " dice, rivers, and Buddhists " were the three things that 
would not obey him. When such a clan became allied with 
the religious leaders it became too strong to be extirpated and 
the best the court could do was to retain the semblance of 
dignity which it lacked.^ 

Of the sects introduced into Japan, some were mere 
schools and their adherents were merely secluded scholars, 
who had no effect on statecraft or on the religion of the 
masses. Others were militant and aggressive; their ad- 
herents were both scholars who disputed in regard to the 
interpretation of scriptures and worldly schemers who util- 
ized religion to influence politics. To the mass of people, 
the various forms of Buddhism, represented by the " twelve 
schools " (or more), were, as metaphysical variations, unin- 
telligible. The populace reacted not to such intellectual sub- 
tleties but to the outward glory of a religion which pre- 
sented to their unaccustomed eyes and ears a magnificent 
ritual, imposing temples, gorgeous processions, richly clothed 
priests, waving banners, genuflexions, mystic mutterings, 
incense, bells, chaunts, readings in an unknown tongue, and 
added to all this the promise of a future life of happiness 
and the service, at their disposal, of learned and potent ma- 
gicians, which was the view held by the common people in 
regard to the monks. 

It will be useful, however, to sketch in briefest outline 
the distinctions between the Buddhist sects, because at 
least two of the twelve became the real interpreters of 
Buddhism to the common people. Curiously enough, mo-st 
of these sects are not established upon a broad basis of 

the Buddhists fought in arms against each other and against the 
government. 

1 The Taira family was overthrown in 1185 a. d. It was super- 
seded by the Minamotos and they held power till subdued by the 
Ashikogas, whose dynasty lasted from 1338 to the end of the six- 
teenth century. This last family in 1392 settled the contest between 
the " two emperors " (of the south and north) in favour of the 
northern court. Defeated by Nobunaga, they finally yielded to the 
Tokugawa family (1603-1868). 



292 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Buddhistic scriptures but each upon a body of doctrine 
drawn from one late Buadhistic tract. It is as if Chris- 
tian sects were based on selected writings of the Church 
Fathers, a City-ot-God sect, etc. 

Of the sects, the majority are of Chinese origin and they 
are divided also by geographical distinctions. The earliest, 
brought from China, were sects of the old Nara period 
(720-760 A. D.). Then come the two great mediaeval sects 
(c. 800-1000), when Kioto was made the capital ; and finally 
the four most important sects, Zen, Jodo, Shin, and Nichi- 
ren, of the Kamakura period (between 1175 and 1253). 
Only the oldest sects belong to the Hinayana or Little Ve- 
hicle. We shall find also that there is a sudden change of 
base in the religious position of these sects, from knowledge 
to faith, from agnosticism or atheistic idealism to the idea of 
God, as mercy or immortal life or immortal glory, Amida, 
etc. But the idea itself was not new. Faith and God were 
old properties of Buddhistic propaganda and Amida was 
contemplated mystically long before there was a Jodo sect. 
It is simply that in Japan as in India the need of God and the 
faith-form of salvation came later to sectarian expression. 
The period intervening between that of Buddhistic organ- 
ization and this reform was one of degeneration, civil wars, 
and the rise of military clans. ^ 

It will be unnecessary to discuss all the sects, which, 
though counted officially as twelve, really number, when 
the sub-sects are included, about fifty. Typical sects or 
schools which really have no religious importance among 
the people are, for example, the (seventh century) Kusha, 
a school studying particularly one text which, as its name 
implies, resembles a " storehouse " of Little Vehicle meta- 

1 For convenience these periods may be roughly estimated as : 500- 
800 A. D., period of establishment, introduction of aid sects, Prince 
Shotoku and the Nara sects ; 800-1000 a. d., ecclesiastical organiza- 
tion, the Kioto sects, Genshin, the abbot of Eshinin, pioneer of 
the Amida cult; 1000-1200 a. d., ecclesiastical decay, civil wars, 
Minamoto dictatorship at Kamakura; 1200-1300, religious reforma- 
tion, Amida- worship, Zen sect, etc. 



RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 293 

physics; also the synchronous sects called Sanron^ and 
Jojitsu (subjective idealism), the latter of which, now 
extinct, was a school of the Little Vehicle, while the San- 
ron professed to be eclectic; and the Vinaya or Ritsu sect 
(Little Vehicle), all of which were branches of or studied 
especially the tenets of the Hosso, of Dosho and Gyogi 
Bosatsu. The Vinaya (sect) was brought directly from 
China to Japan and established without modifications in 
the eighth century. The Hosso sect, brought to Japan in 
625 A. D. (or c. 650?), is still extant and has the longest 
history of all the sects. It was Gyogi Bosatsu, a leader of 
this sect, who (above) first thought of identifying the Sun 
with the Buddhist Vairocana. At present this sect is the 
smallest of all, having only forty-one temples and less than 
seventy priests ; but historically it is one of the most inter- 
esting, since it came directly from India to China, whence 
it was almost at once transplanted to Japan, and is most 
closely connected with the Hindu Yoga philosophy. Like 
the Sanron it is eclectic in its scriptures and as a Mahayana 
sect teaches subjective idealism. Many of the earlier 
sects have disappeared. They yielded, probably because of 
their lack of contact with " real life," ^ to the later schools, 
most of which belong to the Great Vehicle. Of these, 
the pantheistic Kegon sect, which came to Japan in 735 a. d., 
is made picturesque on account of the fables attached to its 
transmission and the divine manifestations which took place 
when it was revealed. In the eighth century also came 
from China the somewhat similar but warlike Tendai sect, 
which dared to assert and maintain temporal authority 
against the court. It was introduced (y6y~S22) by Saicho 
(Dengyo Daishi) and teaches that salvation may be ob- 

^ This school denies the real existence of phenomena and main- 
tains that nothing is known of the noumenal world. 

2 The sects at first were aristocratic schools of scholars supported 
by and resident in Nara, the capital, or near it. All that the com- 
mon people got from them was the universal Buddhistic truths, 
knowledge of Karma (Japanese Ingwa), desire of Nirvana, worship 
of Buddha, celebration of his birthday (April 8), etc. 



294 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

tained by the realization of what it calls " Buddha " in one- 
self through any means fitted to the intelligence of the 
learner (hence unjustly called " Jesuitical Buddhism " by 
some Western scholars). It even took into its fold Shinto 
gods, such as Fudo, the many-faced god who dispels de- 
mons with fire. It is based on the text called the Lotus of 
the True Law (or Perfect Truth). At one time it had 
40,000 monks, but it has at present little influence in its 
original form, though it has developed three sub-sects. 
This and the following Shingon sect were most influential 
during the Heian period (794-1186 a. d.), toward the close 
of which the monks began to take more interest in politics 
than in religion. In the following period (i 186-1339) 
Yoritomo (d. 1200) had to forbid the priests to carry arms.^ 
Shingon or the True Word sect (also based on the Lotus) 
followed Tendai. The Word was no more than a mantra 
or magic formula; one who knew it could produce any 
desired effect, including salvation, by thinking. Kukai or 
Kobo was its introducer, a clever painter and engineer 
(774-835 A, D.), who had studied Buddhism in China with 
Saicho (804 A. D.) and like him established Shinto gods as 
Buddhist saints. Buddha in this sect, as in most of the 
Mahayana sects, was not so important as the Universal 
Being called Vairocana (Jap. Biroshana), a form of 
Buddha, or rather that eternal Buddha of whom the his- 
torical Buddha is a manifestation. Magic and a gorgeous 
ritual made this sect acceptable to the masses ; the doctrine 
that mind and matter are one and that every one can become 
Buddha (for Buddha is the universe inherent even in dust) 
endeared it to the admirers of mystic pantheism. Tendai 
and Shingon are the only sects to adopt the Tibetan prayer- 
wheel. A similar contrivance, seen at some temples, is more 

iThe Tendai was an attempt (begun in China by Chi K'ai) to 
harmonize all sects; but in Japan it tended to adopt the "vacuity" 
principle : real being is beyond all phenomena and relativity ; the 
universal must be manifested in the particular; reality unites both. 
This was the doctrine Nichiren (below) sought to restore to purity 
from the mixed Shinto-Buddhism of the later schools. 



RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 295 

original. It is called rinso, a revolving book-case contain- 
ing Buddhist scriptures. The believer who revolves it with 
the hand gets all the merit of revolving the contents of 
the volumes in the head. 

The last two sects are the first of the Kioto sects, called 
by some writers the mediaeval sects in distinction from the 
old sects, which had already declined by the eighth century. 
Their influence was clearly in the direction of popularizing 
religion and making it easy for the common people, though 
the metaphysics of the Tendai and the mysticism of the 
Shingon were only for adepts. After the prestige of the 
Tendai was lost, an offshoot of the sect carried still further 
the popularization of Buddhism. 

This was the Zen or Contemplation ^ sect, which has 
three schools. Its original thought is that book-knowledge 
is vain; one must find salvation by looking into one's own 
soul. This view led to a practical revolt against idolatry and 
made the believers quietists (the Rinzai school, founded by 
Eisai, 1141-1215). Another school of this sect gave up this 
extreme view and devoted itself to study as well as to con- 
templation (the Soto or ^Sodo school, founded by Dogen, 
1200-1253). The names are taken from Chinese Buddhists 
of an earlier date. The third school (Obaku) was founded 
by a Chinese priest, Ingen by name, in 1650. The Zen sects 
were virtually Japanese (not Chinese). They remained not 
only active but militant and acrimonious up to the present 
day. The most remarkable result of this teaching of con- 
templation, a mystic self -intoxication, which has earned the 
Zen the name of Quakers of Japan, is that it has become the 
favourite sect of the warrior class. Yet this apparent con- 
tradiction is easily explained. The Zen sect was located at 
Kamakura (military headquarters). Contemplation and 
finding God within oneself easily become in unphilosophic 
minds a laissez faire religion, which emphasizes the beauty 

iThat is Dhyana, the school of Bodhidharma, which reached 
China in 520 a. d. The method was old; the sect merely stressed 
the old feature. 



296 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

and godliness of non-action in religious matters, while the 
essential contemplation is transformed into idle thought or 
vacuity of thought. It thus gave the soldiers freedom from 
ritual and from mental effort, which was all they desired. 
It became and still is one of the largest and most popular 
sects, and to its influence is partly due the chivalrous char- 
acter of the native soldier. It may be said to have trans- 
ported Buddhism from the school to real life. 

But in all the sects thus far mentioned, salvation, though 
admittedly better than non-salvation, was rather a vague 
benefit to the common man. He was taught that salvation 
meant Nirvana, practically (in Japan) absorption or union 
with the Blessed All, and since the alternative was a dreary 
outlook of perpetual pain he was easily induced to strive 
for salvation, especially when this was attainable at little 
or no cost, as among the adherents of the Zen sects. Be- 
cause, without exception, these sects granted salvation as 
the reward either of knowledge or of the illumination which 
came from contemplation, they were known as sects incul- 
cating the old way of Salvation by the Law. Just after 
the Zen sect had begun its existence, arose the first of two 
even more popular sects, which together go by the name of 
Jodo or Happy Land sects, teaching salvation by faith in 
Amida. These sects substitute, for knowledge and illumi- 
nation as means of salvation, simple faith or faith combined 
with its expression in ejaculation. But, and this induce- 
ment was even stronger than the simple means of salvation, 
the happiness promised to the faithful was no longer the 
abstruse joy of union with an incomprehensible all-entity but 
the sensuous joy of a heavenly paradise. This belief is 
based on a Buddhist text describing future felicity in ma- 
terial terms, and the Buddha here is regarded as (Amida) 
Amitabha or Amitayus (Limitless Glory, Limitless Life). 
The believer looks forward to the Happy Land, Sukhavati, 
to which he may attain hereafter by merit and faith, ex- 
pressing his faith in the words " BoW to Amida,'* whose 
grace will bring him to the Happy Land where Amida will 



RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 297 

meet his soul.^ This is the pietistic religion of pure Jodo, 
founded (1133-1212 a. d.) by Genku (Honen) as a reform, 
for Honen was originally of the Tendai sect, which saved 
only the elect, while Jodo saves all beHevers.^ 

A little later this reform was itself slightly reformed by 
Shinran (Hanyen; 11 73-1 262), whose knowledge of the- 
ology was doubtless inborn, for he claimed descent from a 
Japanese god. He was a pupil of Honen who, though fa- 
mous for saintliness, suffered from the jealousy of the ortho- 
dox and was banished ; some of his followers were slain. 
Undaunted by this precedent, however, Shinran renewed the 
evangel, only simplifying it a little more, so that he felt 
obliged to call his sect the Jodo Shin-shu, or True Jodo Sect. 
This re-reformed sect abandoned even the " bow to Amida " 
formula as a means of salvation and maintained that one 
did not have to wait for death and a greeting hereafter 
from Amida to become sanctified ; but Amida is found in life 
in the soul of whosoever has faith in him. This creed found 
favour with the Shoguns and the common people, who be- 
came converted in too large numbers to be expelled. Faith, 
not virtues, was the shibboleth of the sect. At present it 
has ten sub-sects and nearly twenty thousand temples, be- 
ing the most popular and numerous of all the sects, though 
the Zen is a close rival. The Shin-shu (as it is usually 
called, though it is also termed Ikko and Monto, "gate") 
is really a Protestant theistic church, which relies on " the 
merits of another " and on faith as means of salvation. 
Faith brings change of heart and so cleanses it of sin. 
Shinran, like Luther, shocked the church-world by marry- 
ing and his monks follow his example, marrying and even 
eating meat, a practice abhorred of all Buddhists except 

1 Stikhavati means "happy" (land). _ It is erroneously rendered 
"pure" by those (and others) who think of "a land of pure de- 
light." Sukha does not even imply pure; it is joy, happiness, the 
antithesis of duhkha, pain, misery (never impurity). For the texts, 
see SBE. xlix. 

2 f he essence of this creed w^as discovered by Honen in the writ- 
ings of the Chinese monk Zendo (Santao). 



298 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Buddha. The disciples of this teacher need not study Vairo- 
cana, the mystic sunflower of pantheistic divinity, centred 
in petals bearing the name of Amitabha, Manjusri, Avalo- 
kiteshvara, Maitreya, and other Buddhas and Bodhisats, as 
taught in Shingon, nor must they pass through three grades 
of wisdom. They need only lead a moral life and have 
faith in Amida. Even Jodo demands that meritorious deeds 
should back up faith, be it only the merit of repeating the 
" bow to Amida " formula ; but the Shin teaches that faith 
alone is necessary and then Amida, realized in the heart, is 
within oneself, not, as in Jodo, waiting to welcome one, after 
death, to the Happy Land. 

As Honen got his pietistic inspiration in regard to faith 
while reading Zendo's works, and as Zendo lived in China, 
where Nestorians were settled in 635 a. d., some have 
even thought that the Happy Land sects derive from Chris- 
tianity, an intrinsically improbable thesis in this form, 
since they are based on a text which, older than Chinese 
Buddhism, easily lends itself to the application made of it 
by both sects. The Shin use a rosary, but this was im- 
ported from India. It is the leading sect in the care of 
the lowly and the only sect which " provides a way of sal- 
vation for women.'* The metaphysicians of this sect main- 
tain their belief in an immanent (not a personal) divinity, 
and assert that the common conception of Amida is only 
for the benefit of those unable to understand truth. But, 
to the mass of worshippers, Amida is practically saviour 
and God. They are well-nigh monotheistic ; they are saved 
by the grace of God and live with him in Paradise for ever. 
In other words, the people of Japan have gone through 
the same stages and come out at the same place as have 
the common people of India and elsewhere, to whom re- 
ligion without God and Heaven is meaningless. In this 
particular the Shin stands in sharp contrast with the Zen, 
which ignores God and promises nothing as to a future life. 
In another, outer, particular it resembles Zen; for it also 
is a military religion beloved of soldiers, and as a church 



RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 299 

militant has interfered with effect in politics, Jodo recog- 
nizes other divine forms, notably that of Kuannon, the 
goddess ^ of mercy, whose seven or more, even thirty-three, 
images are often found in Buddhist temples. Yet in this 
regard the Jodo merely retains that background of poly- 
theism which lies behind all Oriental pantheism and theism. 
Finally it may be observed that in both Happy Land sects 
the distinction between the moral code of the layman and 
that of the monk, which dates from the beginning of Bud- 
dhism, is definitively abandoned. 

The last important sect of which we have to speak is that 
of (Rencho) Nichiren (i 222-1 282 A. d.). Very different 
estimates of his character have been made. To one scholar, 
his sect is " the most superstitious and bigoted of Japanese 
Buddhist sects." ^ To another, Nichiren was a great apos- 
tle of righteousness. The sect arose at a time when Kub- 
lai Khan was threatening to destroy Japan and Nichiren 
came into notice first as a prophet of evil, which might be 
prevented if the people were converted to the truth as he 
saw it. They had sinned, said Nichiren, in adopting Shin- 
gonism, which was mixed with Shintoism and Hinduism and 
led merely to sorcery. Again he opposed the cult of Amida, 
who had usurped the place of Buddha, the formalism of 
the Ritsu school, and the " devilish " religion of the Zen. 
He took as his guide the scripture called the Lotus of the 
True Law (or Perfect Truth, as he termed it), which had 
been rightly presented by Dengyo before it was misunder- 

1 Kuannon is now the goddess of mercy and is one of the most 
beloved of Japanese divinities, answering in this capacity to the 
Virgin Mary as the merciful. She really is a male (or sexless) 
divinity and was so depicted when first introduced into China, 
where she or he represents Avalokiteshvara and as such, a Buddhist 
figure, deserves a place in the church, which cannot be said of 
many other divinities adopted by the Buddhists and converted into 
church dignitaries, Chujo Hime, an early Buddhist nun, famous 
for her pious tapestry, is now regarded as an incarnation of 
Kuannon. On the Chinese form, see above, p. 270. 

2 A judgment made by a native and cited by Chamberlain in 
Things Japanese, London, 1890, p. 116. 



300 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

stood, and his confession of faith was simply to pronounce 
its title. Nichiren preached with fierce religious zeal and 
if he is mocked as a revivalist who has " deified even mud," 
it must not be forgotten that he also taught what Buddha 
taught, not salvation by the grace of Amida, but that each 
one must work out his own salvation. To Nichiren, this 
was accomplished by observing the law, by self-examination, 
by reflecting on the blessings vouchsafed to the true be- 
liever, and by constant prayer. One must not only know 
but live the truth, which is eternal, as its revealer is eternal. 
He believed himself to be a reincarnation of an ancient 
saint; he was a mystic; Buddha manifests himself in trees 
and grass, in the whole universe ; but Buddha is Lord and 
Father of all; we are his children; religion is the realiza- 
tion of this truth and of the Buddha-nature in ourselves. 
" Behold the kingdom of God is within you." Surely we 
cannot condemn this teacher as a fanatic demagogue,^ 
though his intolerance was not in the spirit of ancient 
Buddhism. 

The remaining sects are small and unimportant, though 
the native theistic Yudsu Nembutsu (''Bow to Buddha") 
sect has 358 temples and the Ji - has 515 temples. It 
was not till three centuries after the founder of the last 
of these sects that reviving Shinto began also to divide 
into sects, to the number of about a dozen. None of 
these is anything more than an adaptation of Shinto to 
Buddhism or an adaptation of Chinese philosophy to Shinto. 
One of these is based upon the philosophy of Chu Hi 
combined with Shingon Buddhism and another reverts to 
the Chinese Yi-King. These two sects, the Suiga and 

1 There are now seven sub-sects, 5066 temples, and a great multi- 
tude of followers of Nichiren's Hokko-shu. For a sympathetic ac- 
count, see Anesaki, Nichiren the Buddhist^ Prophet, Cambridge, 
M-ass., 1916; for one less appreciative, Griffis, The Religion of 
Japan, New York, 1895, p. 281. The Kamakura Zen, Jodo, Shin, and 
Nichiren sects represent distinctively Japanese Buddhism/ 

2 The Ji-shu, founded 1275 a. d. by Ippen, uses the same ritual as 
that of the Tendai and Shingon, but is closely related to the Jodo. 



RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 30^ 

Deguchi sects, belong to the seventeenth century. An 
earlier sect is that called the Jikko. It resolves Izanagi 
and Izanami into the male and female forms of one abso- 
lute deity, who resides in the Fuji mountain, which should 
be worshipped as the intellectual centre of the universe. 
Comment is superfluous. A Japanese proverb says " when 
folly passes by, reason draws back." One of the latest of 
these eclectic sects is that called Shingakuha. It arose in 
the eighteenth century and teaches " heart-culture," inducing 
religion by the use of colloquial language, humour, etc. 

Among most of the Buddhist sects there has been an 
easy tolerance of gods not their own but drawn into their 
fold by naming them saints of Buddhism. These gods go 
by the general title of Gongen, temporary manifestations 
of Buddha. Thus Sarasvati, the wife of Brahman, is re- 
vered as Benten, goddess of sea and sky. She appears also 
as one of the Seven Happy Gods of Fortune, who, histor- 
ically, may be Kubera, the Hindu god of wealth, Sarasvati, 
Mahakala (Time as god), the Buddhist Maitreya, two 
forms perhaps representing Lao-tse,^ and one Shinto god. 
This group of gods exorcises demons by means of beans, 
hated by demons, on New Year's eve and serves as a 
bugaboo to children. Another god is Daruma, Hindu 
Dharma, god of justice, who renounced his eyelids to see 
better, a form of the Hindu *' unwinking gods," but is 
degraded at present into an image, having a pipe in his 
mouth and serving as a sign for tobacconists. An earlier 
figure is Jizo, of the eighth century, who compassionates 
mothers and children. The Tendai sect tolerated the wor- 
ship of the Two Kings (Ni-o), who are really Indra and 
Brahman disguised as Gongen. Ema, or Emma-o, god of 
the dead and ruler of hills, seems to be a god of Buddhism. 
Statesmen and generals are also deified or canonize.d. 
leyasu, the implacable but great unifier of Japan, notorious 

1 Griffis, op. cit., p. 218. The Japanese names are Bishamon, Dai- 
koku, Ebisu, Fukurokuju, Hotei, jurojin, and Benten or Benzaiten 
(serpent-symbol). The identifications are not assured. 



302 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

as the persecutor of Christians in the seventeenth century, 
was a member of the Jodo sect, which was favoured by the 
Shoguns, and he is now glorified or deified as Toshu-gu, 
Great Light of the East, or Gongen Sama (in idol-form). 
Takamori, the desperate upholder of feudalism against the 
new regime (died in 1877), is now the regent of Mars. 
The earlier rebel Masakado on dying proved so malevolent 
a ghost that his spirit was appeased by making him a god, 
till, in the revolution of 1868, when he fell into disfavour, 
his idol was hacked to pieces, and his divine office was 
handed over to a Shinto god. Other idols commonly found 
in Japanese temples are those of the 500 early Hindu saints 
or Arhats (Rakan in Japanese). Some of these at least 
really lived, so that they may be set down as the first of 
Buddhists exalted to a quasi divinity; but owing to the 
nebulous character of gods in Japan it must never be for- 
gotten that to be made a " god " is a small matter, a decora- 
tion, so to speak. With men it amounts at most only to 
canonization. Like most Japanese practices it was adopted 
from the Chinese, and, as in China, even scholars are thus 
dignified. So the wise imperial councillor Michizane, the 
minister of the emperor Uda (893-898 a. d.), was canon- 
ized as Ten j in Sara, the heavenly Patron of Literature ; 
he now has many idols. Mr. Benj. S. Lyman, an American 
scholar and engineer of Philadelphia, who developed the 
Japanese mining industry forty years ago, has recently been 
made " god of metals." 

The immense importance of Buddhism in the cultural 
and religious evolution of Japan cannot be overestimated. 
" Almost every branch of industrial and artistic develop- 
ment owes something to the influence of the [Buddhist] 
creed." ^ It gave the Japanese a culture and religion which 
have had a lasting effect for good. At the same time it 
must not be forgotten that all the Buddhist sects lost their 
spiritual value as they became mobs of hired soldiers fight- 

1 Professar Asakawa in Japan, History of Nations, Philadelphia, 
1906, p. 33- 



RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 303 

ing for or against a political chieftain. In the fourteenth 
century the monks became mere militia. Sect fought with 
sect and especially the Shin and Nichiren sect- feuds cost 
the lives of thousands of monks. The only sects which 
were not entirely transformed by military activity were the 
Zen (Soto and Rinzai) sects whom the Ashikagas supported. 
They, almost alone, upheld religion and learning in that 
troubled era. 

But what Buddhism accomplished ethically is another 
matter. In the period of degeneration (i 000-1200 a. d.) 
the Buddhist monasteries, like those of the same period 
in Europe, were centres of vice and debauchery and 
Buddha himself, in the docetic interpretation toward which 
the Mahayana leaned, could offer no commanding personal 
model to which appeal might be made in favour of a moral 
code, especially as even the learner's own personality was 
questioned. Despite these disadvantages theoretically, the 
Buddhist had a high moral code, but its practical strength 
was due to the infusion of Confucian ethics. 

Christianity was brought into Japan by Xavier in 1549 
and found at first no opposition, owing to the anarchical 
state of the country, in which the Buddhists had had a 
hand, so much so indeed that the war which caused the 
overthrow of the Togashi family goes by the name of the 
Shin war. It was at this time that the Jesuits arrived and 
their initial success was due to this political reason. For 
Nobunaga, who suppressed the Shogunate for thirty years, 
would have been glad to suppress the Buddhists also. He 
did in fact burn the temple of Enriakuji, really a fort 
filled with an army of Buddhist priests, who had pillaged 
the country and acknowledged no authority for half a mil- 
lennium. Nobunaga was a member of the ancient Taira- 
Oda family but he was not himself a Shogun, though he 
formed an alliance with (the Tokugawa) leyasu in the 
interest of the imperial power. The only reason he sup- 
ported the Christians was that he wished to weaken the 
secular power of the Buddhists. Under imperial patronage 



304 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

of this kind it is not surprising to learn that within forty 
years there were from two to three hundred thousand 
Christian converts. Most of them were ordered by their 
Daimios to be converted, sometimes " within a day." The 
Jesuits, however, naturally saw in this unexpected catholicity 
on the part of the Japanese the hand of God. But mis- 
sionary success lasted only till the Tokugawa Shoguns 
began to fear that Spain was seeking under guise of reli- 
gion to make Japan a Spanish province. For by this time 
the Japanese had become acquainted with Portuguese and 
Dutch traders and knew what Spanish ambition meant. 
The result was that even in i587 an edict of Hideyoshi ^ 
banished all foreign religions, the short-lived patronage of 
Christianity ceased, and the foreign sect was prohibited by 
the Tokugawa. leyasu then began a systematic persecu- 
tion of the sect (in 1614), obliging converts to recant by 
trampling on the crucifix and meting out to the Jesuits the 
same measure they themselves had adopted toward Euro- 
pean heretics, namely torture as barbarous as that of the 

1 At the death of Nobunaga in 1582 his chief officer Hideyoshi 
(a man of low birth) became the most powerful man in Japan, 
leyasu (of the Tokugawa family) envied his position and at first 
rebelled against him; but as each of these leaders feared the other, 
they eventually laid aside their differences and Hideyoshi, highly 
honoured by the emperor, became chancellor of the empire. He 
conquered Korea and China before he died in 1598 and was suc- 
ceeded by leyasu, who, refraining from foreign conquests, devoted 
himself to founding the fortunes of his own Tokugawa family and 
establishing a Shogunate that gave lasting peace to his country. It 
was not till Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and leyasu had established peace 
that Neo-Confucianism, in the Shushi and Oyomei (Wang-Yang- 
Min, above, p. 265) forms, became fully established in Japan. The 
Shushi school, recognized as orthodox in China by the Ming em- 
perors (1402-1644), was made the authorized system by the Toku- 
gawa Shoguns. It was encouraged especially because it promoted 
loyalty. The Oyomei school trusts more to intuition than to knowl- 
edge (compare Zen). A third school of Neo-Confucianism is that 
known as the Classical school of Yamaga Soko (father of Bushido) 
and Ito Jinsai. It stresses emotion but professes to go back to 
Confucius. A fourth, Eclectic, school is a combination of all exist- 
ing Confucian schools. See A. K. Reischauer, SHidies in Japanese 
Buddhism, New York, 1917, p. i43f. 



RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 305 

Inquisition. The persecution even in Japan was not all 
on one side. Daimios, who had been converted by the 
Jesuits, persecuted such of their vassals as refused to be- 
come Christian,' and this undoubtedly strengthened the sus- 
picion that the " Kirishitan " were endeavouring to make 
Japan a Spanish d-ependency, as was charged by the Dutch, 
leyasu was a national reformer and a statesman of high 
order, who rescued Japan from internal disorders that had 
raged for two hundred years and gave her a peace which 
lasted for two hundred more. His measures were harsh 
even toward his own countrymen, for he deliberately im- 
poverished all the Daimios in order to weaken them and 
thus preserve the country from their incessant contentions. 
He permitted the imperial power to retain little real power 
and established a Shogunate which endured till 1868. In 
these important political activities the suppression of Chris- 
tians, who had shown arrogance and intolerance, was only 
an item. He died two years after the persecution was 
started. Besides the Jesuits, the Dominicans, Augustinians, 
and Franciscans had founded missionary settlements in 
Japan. Converted Daimios had even sent out investigators 
to visit Spain and Italy. They remained eight years and 
visited the Pope (i 582-1 590). A similar expedition of 
Christian Samurai started in 161 3 and returned in 1620, 
after another visit to the Pope. Despite the (1587) edict 
of banishment, Christians continued to enter the country 
disguised as merchants and for that reason were all the 
more assumed to be spies of Spain. Finally they took sides 
with the enemies of the now all-powerful Tokugawa family, 
and were implicated in an open rebellion (1637-39) i" b^~ 
half of Masudo Shiro, Tokisada, Vv^ho was desirous of be- 
coming the ruler of the empire. In order to win support 
among the farmers and common people he let it be known 
that he performed miracles and was the " heavenly mes- 
senger " prophesied by Xavier, and destined to estabHsh 

1 Nobunaga destroyed Buddhist temples and killed the priests 
with their women and children. 



306 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Christian supremacy. Supported by the Christians he seized 
a province, murdered its governor, and set up an independ- 
ent principaHty. He was overthrown and his supporters, 
among them the Christians, were massacred. Christian 
thus became synonymous with rebel and traitor; but a 
Christian might evade death by becoming a Buddhist. Not 
only missionaries but all Europeans as such were now 
suspect. No European books were allowed to be brought 
into the country and all ports were closed except to the 
Dutch. They, because they had never been missionaries 
but on the contrary had rather aided the authorities against 
the Jesuits, were still permitted to enter by one port. It 
is well to consider these political data. They palliate some- 
what the crime of persecution, though they cannot undo the 
horrors enacted during fifty years. In 1716, the six-year 
census, called " examination of faith," was instituted and 
given into the hands of the Buddhists, who by means of 
this register were able to keep track of and suppress most 
of the genuine converts to Christianity. Yet in 1865 some 
of the descendants of the early Christians were discovered 
still clinging to the signs of their old faith. Four thousand 
of them suffered imprisonment for their fidelity (1867). 

The changes during the last century have been mainly 
along political lines, the re-establishment of the Shinto rit- 
ual,^ the exclusion and readmission of Christianity. No 
notable novelty has been introduced except that of inter- 
preting Shinto in various unhistorical ways by way of ad- 
justing it to modern needs. Thus in 1849 Shinto was first 
taught as a monotheistic religion by Kurozumi, who re- 
garded the sun-goddess (Heaven-Shining One) as God (qua 
the sole source of vitality), with whom man should seek 
to be in communion. Both Buddhism and Shinto were 
formally disestablished in 1884. Buddhism had been abol- 
ished as a factor in the state religion after the restoration 
of imperial authority in 1868. But the Buddhists were still 

1 This was not intended as a reassertion of Shinto religion as the 
State religion, but it seems to the people to imply this. 



RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 307 

allowed to preach patriotism and humanitarianism (1872). 
Freedom of religious thought was granted to the people and 
in 1875 the Doshisha theological school was founded by 
Neeshima, who had been a student in America. Subse- 
quently, there was a temporary union of the three older 
cults, Shinto, Buddhism, and Confucianism, called the " Way 
of uniting three religions," to oppose Christianity. Since 
the war with China (1894-95) and that with Russia (1904- 
05) the national spirit has reawakened the warrior-spirit and 
there has been a strong tendency to regard Shinto as the 
national religion, though the modern followers of this " an- 
cestor-worship " do not themselves believe in a future life. 
Morality is on the whole taking the place of religion among 
the educated classes.^ 

Prophecy is no part of history, but as Japan is the only 
great nation without a religion recognized by the State or 
generally acknowledged by the people, it is a tempting field 
for speculation. Its statesmen inculcate the religion of 
loyalty. Its philosophers believe in a Oneness which 
transcends human categories. Its plain people are idolaters 
or agnostics, or in theistic sects recognize Amida as God. 
Yet in this regard the Christian missionary objects: *' they 
cannot conceive of God as a person." But in such a state- 
ment '' God " translates Buddha as the Absolute and it 
would perhaps be tempting, if temerarious, to inquire how 
many Christians regard The Absolute as a personal God. 
What is significant is that Japanese Buddhism regards 
Amida simply as the highest personal expression of 
Buddha, that is, as the highest conception of God humanity 
can have, because the Absolute cannot be conceived at all. 
God, in fact, to the Japanese theologian appears in a 
trinity, first as the Absolute, second as personified Mercy 
and Wisdom in the form of Amida, and third as the 
historical Buddha (or any one of the many Buddhas). 
Salvation,^ obtained in the old sects by '' turning from 

1 Anesaki, Religious History of Japan, Tokyo, 1907, p. 47. 

2 Salvation in early Buddhism means escape from eternal life ; in 



308 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

ignorance and opening" (the mind to truth; tenmdi 
kaigo is the formula), is in the theistic sects, as it seems 
fair to call them, though some missionaries strenuously 
object to the term, a matter of grace extended to a be- 
liever : " All the doctrines of Buddhism are grounded in 
mercy," That this saying may lead to ethical laxity is true ; 
so Lutherism actually led to antinomianism. The Japanese 
say, " He whose heart is pure, to him the heart of every 
being is pure." May we not conversely say also : He who 
has been ready to take as pure religion the best of every 
religion, his heart is religiously pure? But there is an- 
other Japanese saying: *' If the heart be pure, the Way 
will be open." This Way must combine the ethics of 
loyalty with the faith of philosophy. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Hisho Saito, History of Japan, London, 1912. 

G. W. Knox, Development of Religion in Japan, New York, 

1907. 
T. Harada, The Faith of Japan, New York, 1914. 
B. H. Chamberlain, Kojiki, Tokyo, 1906. 
K. Florenz, Geschichte der Japanischen Litteratur, Leipzig, 

1906; Japanische Mythologie, 1901 ; Nihongi, 1903. 
W. G. Ashton, Shinto the Way of the Gods, London, 1905. 
I. O. Nitobe, Bushido, New York, 1905. 
Sir E. Satow, The Revival of Pure Shinto, in Transactions of 

the Asiatic Society of Japan, Yokohama, iii. Appendix; 

Japanese Rituals, ibid, vii and ix. 
Arthur Lloyd, The Creed of Half Japan, London, 191 1. 
Bunyiu Nanjio, A Short History of the Twelve Buddhist Sects, 

Tokyo, 1886. 
A. K. Reischauer, Studies in Japanese Buddhism, New York, 

1917. This has the best description of the Buddhist sects. 

the theistic sects it means admission to Heaven as a friend of God. 
The Karma complex (substitute for soul) of the early Buddhist 
has also become purely psychic or animistic in these sects. 



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 

THE RELIGION OF EGYPT 

We turn now to a group of religions all more or less inti- 
mately related, the Mediterranean-Mesopotamian group, 
composed of Egyptian, Semitic, and Aryan elements inter- 
woven to such a degree that the religions of Babylon and 
Rome, of Abydos and Athens, etc., cannot be regarded as 
quite independent, and yet it is difficult to determine in how 
far each is dependent upon the other. Racial lines become 
rather unimportant. The southern Aryans had some con- 
nexion with those of the North, but, in the South the 
Aryans were merged in the older Mediterranean civiliza- 
tion; while in the East the connexion between Aryan and 
Semite was of the closest. We shall begin with the oldest 
of the Mediterranean religions and then take up the oldest 
Semitic branch and, after studying the other religions of 
this complex in their natural order, irrespective of race, 
come to an end with the religion which, representing the 
union of Aryan and Semitic, is also the logical close of the 
series, since it is, as it were, the full expression of all that is 
enduring in the preceding religions. 

The religion of Egypt appears to be an indigenous crea- 
tion. In its later stages we have to do with foreign types, 
such as the Nubian god Dedun and the protecting dwarf- 
god Bes, who may have come from Somali-land. Espe- 
cially in the Delta was there Semitic influence sufficient to 
add to the Egyptian pantheon the forms of Baal and Astarte. 
But these are easily distinguishable from the native gods. 
The earlier pantheon contained the products of different 
Egyptian localities gradually fused through migration and 

309 



\ 



310 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

politics into closely related or even indistinguishable figures. 
That Egypt received its mythology from Asia has often been 
suggested but never proved.^ 

The indigenous religion, in distinction from mythology, 
was but a phase of African religion in general ; since the 
Egyptians retained many primitive elements in their religious 
customs and in their animal gods. A number of Sudanese 
beliefs and practices, even religious symbols, are like those 
of the Egyptians. But much in this field is too specula- 
tive to be regarded as assured, and at present it will be bet- 
ter to assume that Egyptian belief is not imported, though 
it may to a certain extent have been inherited from earlier 
conditions, and it may be that the pre-dynastic inhabitants 
differed racially from the later in degree, having less admix- 
ture than those, say, of the sixth dynasty (c. 2500 b. c). 

One of the great gods of Egypt was Ptah, the divine 
sculptor, who, by uttering their names, conceived and made 
the world and the gods. He himself was the god of Mem- 
phis and as early as the Pyramid age, that is from 3000 b. c. 
to 2475, was already extolled as the creator. His site, it is 
said, was called Hat-ka-Ptah, ** temple of the soul (or 
genius) of Ptah," pronounced by foreign tongues aikypta, 
Aegyptos. It is fitting that Egypt should have received its 
name from a god and the name itself, if the etymology 
be correct, may serve as a reminder that more than two 
thousand years before Christ a creator god was recognized 
whose word, as conceived by the heart (mind), was the 
source of the world and of spiritual power.^ But cen- 
turies must have elapsed before so philosophic an explana- 
tion of creation was evolved, for behind the image of this 

1 Prof. E. G. Smith, in his recent work, The Ancient Egyptians 
and their Influence upon the Civilisation of Europe, Cambridge, 
191 1, seems to think that an Armenoid element from Syria altered 
the course of later development, and that the Pyramid men were a 
new type. But it is still questionable how sharp a line should be 
drawn between the Ethiopia and Mediterranean peoples, and 
whether a new type arose in the Dynastic period. 

2 A similar creation is attributed to Thoth, the god of wisdom 
(see below). 



THE RELIGION OF EGYPT 3" 

Ptah stretches a long number of years in which the deity- 
was of lower form. This lower form, nevertheless, is also 
of importance, since its very antiquity illustrates the fact 
that, however far back we trace Egyptian history, we find, 
a theogony and theology which already foreshadows the 
system of later millenniums. The Egyptians were, in short, 
from the beginning a religious people. Nor was theirs a 
religion wholly occupied with death and sorrow, as one 
might suppose who knew only the Book of the Dead and 
such documents. As Renouf has emphasized, early reli- 
gious rites were accompanied with music and the dance, 
not simply to scare away demons but to exhilarate the 
human worshippers. Festivals were cheerful; there were 
gay songs ; even dogs were trained to howl a pleasing mel- 
ody ; and in the popular cults there was a boisterous natural 
note which seems almost Hellenic in its mixture of religion 
and sensuousness untinged with grief and boldly joyous, 
the embodiment of pleasure in life rather than fear of 
death. The sun received offerings of fruits and flowers, 
not bloody sacrifice, and hymns of joy, not funereal dirges. 
And if the efiigy of a corpse was exhibited at banquets, as 
Herodotus tells us, it was only that the guests might not 
forget to enjoy themselves, while yet there was time. Not 
a mere reminder of sad things; but Eat and drink, for to- 
morrow ye die; therefore be merry now. Yet this may 
imply scepticism as to the future, which finds voice at an 
early age {circa 2000 b. c). Beyond the grave, it is said, is 
" the land that loves silence " ; hence again, " Be joyful 
now." In the Lay of the Harper, this admonition is fol- 
lowed by another: "Be devoted to pleasure; but be just; 
love right, hate wrong." It is already a moral religion. 
Charity, compassion, gentleness, forgiveness are strictly en- 
joined. To show compassion to the poor, and to be hon- 
est in word as in deed, are virtues which ensure happiness 
hereafter. The funeral formula is en hotep, " in peace," 
and this " Peace be with thee " was felt as an assurance as 
well as a benediction in the case of the good. For after 



\ 



312 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

death the god Osiris judges the soul according to the rule 
of morality thus formulated. Its fate accords with the 
evil or good it has done. Yet eternal life must be insured 
by the care of the living descendants, who give nourish- 
ment to the dead. The ka or soul, image or genius of a 
man, is revered by his family, who establish a shrine for 
it with regular offerings, lustral water, etc., given to the ka 
every tenth day. Such is the outline of this religion as it 
existed for centuries. But there was no purgatory ; prayers 
could not better the condition of the dead. The poor and 
ignorant had a mean place hereafter, yet they suffered no 
punishment because of their ignorance; only sinners per- 
ished. 

But before entering upon a fuller description of this 
religion it will be necessary to trace in outline the periods 
of development to which reference will constantly have to 
be made. There are great gaps in Egyptian history con- 
cerning which -we know nothing.^ What happened from 
the VII to the XI dynasties (2400 to 2100 b. c), is a mat- 
ter of conjecture. Doubtful is the relation between the 
southern and northern kingdoms, between the native and 
Hyksos rulers (c. 1680 b. c), between Egyptian and foreign 
culture. There were forty-two provinces in Egypt and 
each had its local god or gods. But the chief difficulty in 
the interpretation of the religion lies in the antithesis be- 
tween the higher and lower forms, between the priestly and 
bucolic religion, that is, in the internal rather than the ex- 
ternal factors, in the fusion and combination of all these 
great and little gods of which each section of Egypt had 
an over-supply. In rough outline the history of the land 
begins with a king called Menes, mentioned by Herodotus 
(ii. 4, 99) as "the first mortal who reigned over Egypt." 
He was supposed to be of Abydos, of the district This, 

1 Egyptian chronology is based on the statements made by 
Manetho (third century B.C.), who arranged the kings in dynasties, 
on sundry native lists of kings, and on a calendar cycle, which may 
have begun 4240 b. c. For details, see Breasted, History of Egypt, 
New York, 191 1. 



THE RELIGION OF EGYPT 313 

in upper Egypt about a hundred miles below Thebes, which 
Herodotus says he founded, and probably lived in the 
fourth millennium b. c.^ The two kingdoms of upper and 
lower Egypt were then united. The early dynasties, after 
this perhaps mythical king, are reckoned in groups. First 
come the Plrst and Second dynasties, about 3400 to 2980 
B. c. Then comes the Old Kingdom or the Pyramid Age, 
when Memphis was the capital, including dynasties III to 
VI, about 2980 to 2475, that is, the first five hundred years 
of the third millennium b. c. (other authorities give to the 
Old Kingdom the dates 2700 to 2000). To this age be- 
longs the maker of the greatest pyramid, Khufu, or Cheops 
as known to the Greeks. By this time a king was already 
deified, namely Snofru or Soris, last king of the third 
dynasty, who had fought in the East (he also first opened 
copper mines). Some scholars have supposed that he ex- 
tended his power as far as Mt. Sinai. Internal wars in all 
probability account for the gap till the eleventh dynasty. 
The XI and XII dynasties, called the Middle or Feudal Age 
(Kingdom) represent the centuries 2160 to 1788 B.C. 
(sometimes reckoned from 2000 to 1800 B.C.). At this 
time Thebes became most prominent. Syria and Palestine 
were known. Then, after two centuries of invasion (the 
Hyksos kings), ^ followed the dynasties XVIII to XX (first 
half), about 1580 to 1150 b. c, called The Empire. In this 
period ^ the Pharaohs made Syria a province of Egypt. 
Then came a period of decadence, when the priestly power 
got the upper hand and the XXI dynasty was founded by 
a priest of Amon-Re. This period of Decadence extended 
from dynasty XX second half to dynasty XXV, about 11 50 
to 600 B. c. After this, the Restoration, dynasty XXVI, 

^ Or earlier! His approximate date is 3400 B.C. (Breasted), or 
4400 B.C. (Brugsch), or 5650 (Wiedemann). 

- Probably Semites, perhaps Amorites. 

3 The famous XIX dynasty (1350-1200 B.C.) includes Ramses II 
(1292-1225 B.C.), who may be the Pharaoh of the oppression. The 
XXII dynasty was founded 945 B.C. by Sheshonk (Shishak, I Kg. 
xi. and xiv.). 



t- 



314 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

66^ to 525 B. c, the latter the date of the Persian conquest 
by Cambyses ; followed by the Greek conquest of Alexander 
in 332, and by the Roman conquest in 31 b. c. Between the 
XXI and XXVI dynasties there had already been a suc- 
cession of foreign invasions, Lydian, Aethiopic, and As- 
syrian (all part of the Decadence, above). 

From the religious point of view there are three lines of 
thought to be distinguished during this evolution. First, 
the old belief of the people in animal-gods, which has re- 
sulted in a confused mass of strange divinities, half human 
in aspect and half animal. Second, the State religion of 
the sun-god and the belief that royal personages are sons 
of this god and go to him after death. Third, the belief 
in Osiris as a power inimical to the Sun, an earth-power 
associated with death but also with the production of life, 
until this was finally fused with the sun-religion, which 
then developed into a monotheism, about 1375, when Amen- 
hotep IV gave up the worship of the old sun-god, Amon, 
and instituted that of Aton. The great periods of Egyp- 
tian history are those of the XII (begins c. 2000), XVIII 
and XIX (1350-1200) dynasties of Thebes. In the eight- 
eenth dynasty Thothmes (Thutmose) III (i 501-1447), who 
owed his throne to a conspiracy of the priests of Amon, 
practically ruled the then known world. Ramses I (1350 
B.C.) was the first king of the XIX dynasty. But the 
power of the priests destroyed the power of the State and 
by 1 1 00 B. c. the State church ruled the Pharaoh. 

Although we find sun-worship in Horus-form and Re- 
form established in the earliest period, the fact that animal- 
gods were already regarded as forms of the sun probably 
shows that these animal-gods were older than the sun-god, 
and, if so, older than the other nature-gods. Yet it is not 
at all certain that Sun and Nile were not gods as primitive 
as Bull and Crocodile. \ With animals were worshipped 
stones and trees, and these lower, aboriginal, deities had so 
strong a hold upon the people that they were never re- 



THE RELIGION OF EGYPT 315 

nounced till civilization modified them out of recognition 
or did away with them altogether. There is no strong evi- 
dence to support the view of Sayce ^ that such a wave of 
early culture swept over Egypt from w^ithout as to intro- 
duce new religious notions and rites, (e.g., the deification of 
kings). Egyptian kings were worshipped by the fourth 
dynasty. 

Among animals, serpents hold a high place, but as ob- 
jects rather of abhorrence than of regard. Thus in the 
Pyramid texts there are many charms directed against 
them. The sun-god Re was wounded by a serpent and the 
Pharaoh, who is one with Re, is protected from them when 
dead by charms. But this was under the sun-cult, and a 
charm against the serpent is an indication that the magic 
of the charm has taken the place of a belief in the potency 
of the serpent. Pilgrimages are made even to this day to 
the *' mountain of the serpent," where are tombs to a male 
and female serpent, which have been worshipped there for 
six thousand years. Just such a god was the serpent wor- 
shipped by the children of Israel. This serpent-worship 
reaches its culmination in the dread of the asp or cobra- 
like viper and the uraeus, poisonous snakes, particularly 
feared, and hence venerated ; out of the general horror of 
which grew the cult of the dragon-serpent Apop (Apophis) 
with seven heads, the foe of Re and Horus and the monster 
of the deep inimical, to all souls entering the underworld. 
He thus became the personification of the darkness of night 
and of all evil. The sun-god Re and Apop fought much 
as Marduk and Tiamat fight in Babylonian legend. Ac- 
cording to Budge,^ the two stories are so much alike that 
they must have had the same source. Yet this is not an 
inevitable conclusion, since such antitheses appear in mytho- 
logical form elsewhere. This serpent is not an animal, still 
less a totem. It may be said here once for all that many 

1 Gifford Lectures (1903), The Religions of Ancient Egypt and 
Babylonia. 

2 The Gods of the Egyptians, London, 1904, i, p. 327. 



3l6 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

writers have assumed totemic origin for serpent, bull, etc., 
in Egypt without remembering that totemism implies not only 
clan-worship but also brotherhood with the animal-class 
on the part of man. No primitive totemism is found in 
Egypt. The contempt' poured upon the Egyptians by the 
Greek and Roman world was based on partial ignorance of 
what the animals were whom the one revered and the other 
despised. Before the Greek ridiculed him, the higher sort 
of Egyptian had already passed from pure animal- worship 
to nobler conceptions ; but the mass of the people still wor- 
shipped snakes, and stones, and probably the priests in gen- 
eral believed in such divinities. 

It would be useless to enumerate the animals regarded 
as gods by the Egyptians, because the cult was localized at 
first in each instance; a list of them simply represents the 
animals originally regarded as divine at different places. 
It will suffice to notice the most important. 

Herodotus tells us of the worship of Epaphos (Hd. iii. 
28), that is the bull Apis of Memphis, the animal sacred to 
Ptah. This god appeared to the people (and thus made a 
holiday) at an unfortunate moment, which angered Cam- 
byses. On its tongue was a beetle, on its back the figure of 
an eagle, and when Cambyses wounded it, he went mad. 
This is the " new life of Ptah," a bull that conserved the 
life of the creator-god in animal form. He had annual 
festivals and when he died a costly funeral. But this is 
only one elevated form of cattle-worship. The bull per se, 
as well as an incarnation of a higher god, was a bucolic 
divinity. As Serapis of Sinope, late in Egyptian history, 
the Apis became an " Osiris-Apis " and through this con- 
nexion was reintroduced to the Greeks as an equivalent of 
Hades. The Golden Calf of the Israelites may have been 
the symbol of the original god as bull of Memphis.^ As 

1 Joseph married the daughter of a priest of Heliopolis, where 
the Sun was worshipped as a bull or a bull as the Sun, the animal 
being a form of the sun-god ; this is the Mnevis form of Re. 



THE RELIGION OF EGYPT 3X7 

" Serapis," the bull was encircled by a serpent, representing 
immortal life. 

Of the worship of the ram, ba, it need only be said that its 
cult was heightened (as reproductive god) through the acci- 
dent of ba being also the word designating soul.^ Hence 
the ba of Amon-Re was at once the " ram " and the soul 
of the Sun. Khnum, the cataract-god and creator, has a 
ram's head. At Bubastos there was a cult of cats, perhaps 
originally as the foe of snakes; but there was no general 
worship of cats before (c. 2100) the XI dynasty and it 
was not till the XVII dynasty that the cat became chief god 
of Bubastos. Earlier than the cat at the same place was 
worshipped the lion, and the cat may perhaps have repre- 
sented the nobler brute. Later every cat in Egypt was 
mummified and brought to Bubastos for burial as a divine 
creature, sacred to Bast, the goddess with the head of a 
cat or lion, almost identical with Pakht (wife of Ptah). 
The lion, separately, was also revered as an embodiment of 
the Sun, as most local divinities were made forms of the 
Sun. This primitive lion- worship (become sun-worship) 
has been perpetuated in the form of the (" throttler " lion) 
Sphinx at Gizeh, which is of the IV dynasty and probably 
older even than the Great Pyramid, near which it stands. 
This figure, about 140 feet long (the head is about 14 x 30), 
is a lion with a human face, and its position is such as to 
face the rising sun. Lion-gods guarded the tunnel through 
which the Sun passed at night. They were called " Yester- 
day and Today" (Akeru, later Sef and Tuan). But hu- 
man-headed lions (really representing kings) also guarded 
the palace of the king as son of the Sun. They were to 
keep off evil spirits and did not represent mysterious wis- 
dom, as the Greeks thought. They were also male divini- 
ties, not, like the Greek sphinxes, winged lionesses.^ Some 

1 So India confused aja, " goat," with aja, the " unborn," eternal. 

2 But the goddess Sekhmet, representing the Sun's destructive 
heat, has a lion's head. The cat is her manifestation. 



3l8 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Egyptian sphinxes have Hon-heads, others have human 
heads and leonine bodies ; still others, the head of a ram.^ 
The great sphinx at Gizeh dates from the first half of the 
third millennium (time of Cheops) or earlier, and is an 
idealized Hon, perhaps intended as a form of Horus. Be- 
fore it are altar and temple grounds. 

A good example of the very local character of some ani- 
mal gods may be found in the statement that the crocodile, 
Sebek, was killed in some places, as an Elephantine, and 
worshipped in others, chiefly at Thebes. It is feared and 
so killed; it is feared and so deified. As a god it kept off 
hostile tribes across the river. As a demon it was asso- 
ciated with Set, the enemy of Osiris ; but by the VI dynasty 
(c. 2475 B.C.) it was identified with Re, the Sun. In the 
Delta the hippopotamus, Rert, was more generally wor- 
shipped as productive and beneficent. It is the emblem of 
Set and also mother of the Sun in later syncretism. Other 
animals worshipped here and there are the elephant, jackal, 
ichneumon, hare, hedge-hog, shrew-mouse; also the bear 
(perhaps), and the wolf (cf. Lycopolis) ; but not the dog, 
except as jackal. The pig, as associate of Set, the god of 
evil, was detested. The ass was regarded by some as a god, 
by some as a devil. The baboon was the animal or emblem 
of Thoth, but his head was always that of the ibis. 

Among birds, mention must be made first of Horus, the 
falcon (symbol) ; ^ then of the fabled phoenix, Bennu, heron- 
type of resurrection, typified by the new Sun of which it 
was the emblem. Herodotus (ii, 73) reports what he con- 
siders to be the general belief : ^ " It seldom makes its 
appearance. . . only once in five hundred years, as the in- 
habitants of Heliopolis say; who narrate that it comes only 
on the death of its sire. Its plumage is golden-coloured and 

1 A sphinx with a hawk's head represents the hawk-god of Er- 
ment (south of Thebes) called Mentu, god of war in the XIX 
dynasty. 

~ Sokar, the death-god, appears as a hawk, i. e., hawk as soul 
(especially of kings). 

3 It is doubtful, however, whether this is a correct report. 



THE RELIGION OF EGYPT 319 

red and it resembles in shape an eagle ... it comes from 
Arabia and brings the body of its sire to the temple of the 
Sun." The same authority mentions the various animals 
considered as gods in his own day and says that the Egyp- 
tians also worshipped real birds ^ as well as the phoenix and 
that eels and some fishes were sacred to the people. Among 
all the lower animals, none was so sacred as the holy beetle 
or scarab, the symbol of the rising sun and also god of 
creation and resurrection. Owing to its " self -existence " 
(supposed to be born of itself) it became the symbol of 
eternal life. 

It does not present an adequate view of Egyptian reli- 
gion to present these animals as other than they were. To 
refer to Anubis as " the ancient mortuary god," without 
emphasizing that this god was the jackal, who was a mor- 
tuary god because he devoured the dead, is to give a false 
impression. The underlying truth thus glossed over is that 
the beast himself was at first a god; only as a later phase 
can we speak of the god of the dead as a divinity having 
only a trace left of his animal origin.^ 

If we turn now to the higher gods we shall find a number 
of local divinities whose tendency is to enlarge their do- 
main and become vaguer in consequence of a wide-spread 
synecretism. These gods represent natural powers as well 
as abstractions ; they were presumably local divinities grad- 
ually amalgamated both with each other and with higher 
gods even than themselves. They often appear in triads 
and enneads and even in groups of three enneads, which 
consist of the chief local gods. The triad, usually of father, 
mother, and son, is replaced by an ennead consisting of 
eight gods grouped about the chief local god. Altogether 

1 Both the ibis and baboon represent Thoth. The vulture repre- 
sents mother-gods. The goose is connected with Amon. 

2 Anubis was the god of the necropolis of Siut (Lycopolis), where 
the city-god was the "path-opener" (Upwawet), wolf-god or sun- 
god. The city and necropolis gods are often identified. Thus Ptah 
is not only Ptah-Tatanen (two gods in one), but also Ptah-Sokar 
(the necropolis god). 



320 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

the composition of such enneads, belonging to different 
cities, reveals the names of what we may consider the most 
revered gods. Thus at Heliopolis (On) Atum, the sun- 
god, the head of the ennead,^ begets of himself the air-god 
Shu and his wife Tefenet (of unknown meaning), from 
whom were born Geb and Nut (earth-god and sky- 
goddess), whose children were Osiris, Set, Isis, and Neph- 
thys. Later the same city recognizes three enneads, twenty- 
seven gods reckoned as three dynasties prior to the histor- 
ical first dynasty of Menes. 

On the other hand, as opposed to these nature-gods, for 
the most part local gods of the Delta, the ogdoad at Hermop- 
olis in upper Egypt consisted of such abstractions, though 
furnished with animal heads, as the elements or powers 
(differently interpreted) in male and female form, the lat- 
ter being one with the former but with a grammatical end- 
ing indicating the feminine, although the group of eight is 
headed by (Hermes) Thoth. He was the local moon- and 
time-god of creation and magical powers, the scribe of the 
gods, who represents science and art and is represented by 
the ibis or peacock and baboon form, whether as symbol 
or as original deity.^ As such he became the Greek Hermes 
trismegistos (also the planet Saturn). His consort is 
Maat, the Right Order, goddess of measure and justice, 
whose " priests " are the judges. 

The best-known triads are those of Abydos (Philae), 
Osiris-Isis-Horus ; of Memphis, Ptah-Sekhet-Iemhotep ; and 
of Thebes, Amon-Mut-Khensu. Amon is at first a local 
earth-god. Mut, the mother-god, is identified with Isis, the 
cow-mother ; the sky being woman or cow as productive fe- 
male; Khensu, her son, is the moon; Sekhet, wife of Ptah, 

^The sun-god himself is born of Nun, the water of primeval 
chaos, or springs from a lotus or appears on the sun-stone pyramid. 
Each local god is revered as creator. Some of these local divinities 
"were female. Thus the Sky, as creatrix, spins out the world. 

2 Probably originally Thoth with four powers, abstractions or per- 
haps quarters, frog-headed beings (grouped with four others with 
serpent-heads). Compare Michabo and the Four Winds (p. 86). 



THE RELIGION OF EGYPT 321 

is identified with Pakht, and has a lion's head. As already 
noticed, she is a goddess difficult to distinguish from the 
cat-headed Bast ; she is daughter of Re, the sun-god. The 
Sun is male, as is the Moon; but Earth is also male and 
heaven, the sky, is female in this mythology. Mut as 
sky-mother has a vulture's head. As mother of Horus, Isis 
is Hathor, cow; she is also identified with the star Sirius 
(Sothis), as Osiris is with Orion, and at a later date with 
Venus. Probably Hathor was originally quite distinct. 
None of these family triads imply a real trinity. At Ele- 
phantine the triad was not even a " family three," but a male 
god with two females. The enneads are not fixed; some- 
times ten or eleven gods make a group. The individual 
relationship of the gods is also not fixed. Horus, the four- 
fold early sky or sun-god in falcon-form or as a winged 
disc, is son of Isis and of Hathor and also son of Re ; son 
too of Geb and Nut (Earth and Sky), and of Osiris, who 
himself is father, brother, and husband of Isis and father 
and son of Horus. 

Evidently different localities and different times are rep- 
resented by this confusion. We may distinguish in gen- 
eral two geographical groups, one that of the North and 
one of the South, originally two warring nations after- 
wards politically united. The earlier great power was that 
of the South, the seat of the sun-cult. Opposed to this 
is the realm of lower Egypt, the Delta, where the earth- 
god Osiris was recognized and identified with various local 
gods, such as Hapi, the river, the ram at Mendes, and the 
tree at Busiris, and was associated with Isis, local goddess 
of Buto near Busiris ; but he was opposed to Set (Typhon), 
god of storm, dearth, and death, later as Sebek, the croco- 
dile-god of Ombos, and as Apop, god of darkness, a god of 
Upper Egypt and the eastern part of the Delta. Set later 
became the serpent and Satan of the Osiris-cult. Re, the 
material sun, whose name-power Isis controlled and whose 
eyes had to be restored, was worshipped by the " great 
house" (Peraa, Pharaoh) of On (Heliopolis). He was 



322 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

called Atum-Re, later Amon-Re. Osiris, his foe at first, 
was a death-god from his connection with the earth or 
burial. Re is the god who goes through the sky on his boat, 
rowed by stars, of two poles lashed together, like those of a 
Nile boatman. This is the " boat of millions of years " in 
which his worshii)per, the king, hopes to sail with him. The 
early cult of the sun is an aristocratic, royal service; it is 
always the king who hopes to be friend or even overcomer 
of Re ; it is the king for whom the great pyramids are built, 
and to whom stores of provisions are offered in the tomb 
of the pyramid. The royal pyramid itself is a symbol 
of the sun, and the obelisk, crowned with a little pyramid, 
is of the same general character. The pyramid texts depict 
the power obtained by the king through magical charms, 
which he uses to get entry into the eastern sky, where was 
the home of the Sun and other gods. He fares thither on a 
boat ferried by Look-behind, the poleman, and arrives at 
the garden of the Tree of Life, and finally is welcomed 
by the gods, whom he subdues or even devours by magic 
charms, ousting the scribe of Re from his place, or per- 
haps becoming a passenger or rower in the sun-god's boat. 
All felicity and power is his and he uses it unscrupulously 
to get a good place in heaven and even to take the place 
of the sun-god, so that in some texts the king actually be- 
comes Re.^ Such is the royal reUgion of the South. 

On the other hand, in the Delta, opposed to this cult but 
almost as old, is the Osiris-cult. Osiris is not an active god, 
as is Re. He does not help his worshipper, as does Re, by 
interfering in his behalf ; but his son Horus does this for 
him. The worshipper on dying at once becomes Osiris, 
and then Plorus, as his son, exerts himself for the dead. 
Osiris is the god of the poor people and is only gradually 
exalted to the sky ; his native place is earth and the realms 
below earth. It is only later, for example, that the stars 

1 The different sun-presentations are due to the fancy that the 
god sails across the sky (as above) or flies (as the hawk, Horus) ; 
or he is a bull-calf born of Hathor every day, etc. 



THE RELIGION OF EGYPT 3^3 

as souls become his followers, and Osiris himself makes one 
of the four Horus gods, taking the place of the older Horus 
of the East. The great strength of Osiris lay in the popu- 
lar belief that he was a human god ; it was on earth that he 
lived and died, and as soon as the country became one 
politically the two cults began to merge, till even the priests 
of Re had to accept Osiris as a great god and represent him 
as ascending to heaven, though the pyramids themselves 
bear texts showing that at first he was regarded as a foe 
to the sun-god. The royal state theology had finally to 
give way before the cult of the humanized earth-god. Even 
the local habitation of Osiris is changed. Originally he is 
" First of the Westerners " ; then he goes to the East, the 
home of Re, where is the sycamore " on which sit the gods 
in the East." The Hfe of the dead is then changed to a 
sky-life, even in the Osiris cult, and finally the two gods are 
identified, and thus what was primarily the happy fate of 
the king becomes the fate of the pious poor. At first the 
dead king is warned against going to the West : ** Those 
who go West, come net back again." At first, too, the com- 
mon dead are called " those whose places are unknown," 
or vaguely thought of in the West, or again they were 
thought to be stars, but this last belief gave way before that 
of the Re-cult. The pyramid texts do not speak of any 
hereafter in the nether world ; to them the sky was heaven, 
the abode of the blessed dead. The union of the two lands, 
the South and the North, took place, however, as early as 
the twenty-seventh century (when " Unis unites the [North 
and South] ^ two lands"), even if the political activity of 
Menes as uniter of the Two Lands in the thirty-fourth 
century be disregarded. As Re is amalgamated with Atum 
or Tum, oldest name of the sun-god, and with Amon, so 
at last he becomes one with Osiris, as Osiris in turn is 
identified with Ptah. Especially noteworthy, however, is 

^Unis (Unas) was a king of the fifth dynasty for whom was 
built the oldest of the five pyramids containing the Pyramid Texts 
at Sakkarah (the date according to Brugsch would be about 3300). 



324 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

the similar amalgamation with the lower ancient gods, the 
animals. Thus Anubis, the jackal, god of the grave of 
shallow sand, becomes associated with Osiris and with Set. 
Set himself, perhaps the Moab god (Numbers xxiv. 17, 
" break down the sons of Sheth, ' tumult ' "), was at first, as 
explained above, the god of storm and death, who later be- 
came the evil genius, foe of Osiris. 

In the XVIII dynasty, Thutmose (or Thothmes) III 
(1501-1447 B. c.) set up a temple to this foe of Osiris. It 
has been supposed that Set represents a foreign Semitic 
invasion but this is merely supposition. The pantheon is 
not one of very divine beings. All these gods are anthropo- 
morphic ; they are not omniscient, nor omnipotent, but have 
feelings and passions like men, suffer, conquer, and are 
overthrown. Even Re suffers from the serpent and is 
overthrown by human spirits. The combination of local 
gods, which makes a god indicated by a double name Re- 
Amon, Re-Atum, etc., is sometimes utilized to identify dif- 
ferent gods as forms of one at certain periods, as " Khepera 
in the morning, Re at noon." The motherhood of Mut, the 
mother (-sky), passes over to Re and the god is called 
" father and mother of all." Even the gods not of nature- 
origin share in this syncretism. Ptah, who kept his life in 
the Memphis (Apis) bull, is regarded as a form of Re, but 
he was originally the chief god of the " city of the good," 
Memphis, the oldest capital of Egypt (Egypt was the 
sacred name of the town). As said above, he formed a 
triad with Sekhet and lemhotep, who was the physician god. 
As other gods become assimilated to Re, so foreign gods 
join the Osiris cycle. Thoth (Hermes), the literary god 
of art and learning, stands in Re's boat, but he also assists 
Osiris. He appears originally to have been one of the ani- 
mal gods (ibis), but one of his forms is Khensu the moon- 
god ("traveller"). In the earHest period the antagonism 
between South and North was still apparent in theology. 
Horus, son of Isis, leads smiths and metal-workers to the 
North and overcomes the land. He is a hawk-form of the 



THE RELIGION OF EGYPT 3^5 

sun, heru, " he above," and was probably the earliest god 
worshipped by the whole country. He is of especial in- 
terest because of his Greek name Harpocrates (" god of 
silence "), that is Heru-p-khart (or Harpekhred), originally 
the " Horus-child " or younger Horus, son of Isis, as the 
rising sun. Hathor was the mother of the elder Horus. 
Hathor, sometimes sky-goddess, absorbed other goddesses, 
as Re absorbed other gods. She, like Isis, had a cow's head 
and was both mother and daughter of Re, who in his own 
cycle was father of Horus. Sayce regards her as Ishtar, 
Astoreth of Canaan. She became the type of the supreme 
woman, goddess of love, dance, song, yet perfect mother 
and daughter, who was identified by the Greeks with Aphro- 
dite. Yet she was also a goddess of the underworld, who 
received the souls of the dead, as well as consort of Horus. 

The Amon-cult united with that of Re when Amon, after- 
wards important as an oracle but at first an obscure local 
god, became glorious in the XH Dynasty and reached inde- 
pendent greatness, as Thebes became the capital of Egypt. 
This local Amon was raised to be a form of Re, when Thut- 
mose HI conquered Palestine about 1500 b. c. His god ab- 
sorbed then the other forms. It was a priest of this god 
Amon who founded the XXI Dynasty. 

Busiris in the Delta means " plain of Osiris " and his field 
of marshmallows, asphodels, was merely the cemetery of 
Busiris; but the sepulchral temple of the god, an old royal 
tomb, was at Abydos. The views regarding the true nature 
of Osiris are as numerous as the authorities who have dis- 
cussed him. Dr. Budge imagines that Osiris was first a 
king and was then identified with the Nile (the Nile ap- 
pears independently in the triad of Elephantine as a creative 
principle). Sir J. G. Frazer sees in Osiris the type of the 
divine king, whose health and strength are preserved for his 
people by slaying him when he grows weak or old and thus 
passing on his power to the next king. Cases of this sort, 
are found in Europe and elsewhere. But that Osiris was 
actually a king (any more than Adonis) rests only on the 



326 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

support of his " tomb " being that of King Khant. Yet 
even the tomb of Zeus was known and Osiris is rather, hke 
Attis and Adonis, a spirit than a man. It is perhaps more 
reasonable to suppose that the people regarded him as a 
king because of his story and to find in his earthly rather 
than human nature his first existence. We have only to 
extend this to the general fruitful spirit which is shown 
both in Nile and in earth-growth to get the most consistent 
explanation of the god. Yet the important point in the 
religion which centred about Osiris is not how he began, 
but what he was to Egypt. He was looked upon as a man- 
god who had lived, suffered and died and then risen again 
from the dead.^ The story is told crudely. He is de- 
stroyed by the sinful Set and is dismembered ; but Horus 
sacrifices his eye and with it awakens the dead god to life, 
so that ever after a gift to a god is called an " eye of Horus." 
When Osiris rises from the dead he becomes the lord of the 
underworld and every soul that dies and hopes to rise again 
is called Osiris, the god being identified with the soul even 
of the humblest worshipper. One fact is certain, that, like 
Maat ^ and Ptah, he was not a beast-god. Accompanying 
Osiris as judge of the dead, Anubis, the old beast-god of 
burial at Siut, is there to look at the balance, and Nephthys 
the mother of Anubis, who is sister-wife of Set, joins in 
judgment, so that the Osiris-cult is mixed up with the older 
animal-cult, but Osiris himself has no trace of animal origin. 
His sister-wife is Isis, who mourns for him when slain 
and finds his remains, and their child is Horus, the earliest 
form of the goddess-mother (Madonna) with the child. 

1 For allusions (there is no direct evidence) to Egyptian king- 
killing, see M. A. Murray in Man, 1914, No. 12; and for an Ural- 
Altaic case, ib., 1915, No. 13. The great festival at Sais was a sort 
of All-souls, w^hen all the dead returned. The case of Osiris is 
thought to be supported by that of the Shilluk king, but he may 
have been merely the legendary founder of Fashoda. The deifica- 
tion of the king as Osiris does not prove an earlier sacrifice of the 
king, but it suggests it. 

2 With Maat as the right order, justice, etc., a pure abstraction, 
compare Tao and Rita, in Chinese and Vedic mythology. 



THE RELIGION OF EGYPT 3^7 

Thus Osiris represents the type of resurrection and eternal 
Hfe and at the same time is the father in the triad of father, 
wife and son. Osiris's cult as it expanded absorbed that 
of Re, whose attributes were transferred to Osiris. Ac- 
cording to Plutarch (Isis, ch. ix), Isis is one with the god- 
dess of Sais,^ whom the Greeks call Athene. She was the 
great mother-goddess (also mother of the Sun), whose 
shrine bore the inscription, " I am all that was and is and 
is to be and none hath ever raised my veil." The father of 
Osiris is Geb, the earth-god whose chief cult was at Helio- 
polis. Geb and Nut (sky) produced the sun-egg, and Geb's 
symbol is the goose, whence he is interpreted as the " great 
cackler" (Kenken-ir). He is likewise father of Set and 
Nephthys. Nut pours out water for the soul of the dead 
and her holy sycamore at Heliopolis is still holy to the local 
Christian. 

Not quite so confused as his gods is the soul of the wor- 
shipper. At first, indeed, we are confronted with a strange 
medley of " souls," the ka and the ba, the shadow-soul, and 
other forms, but in fact, though savages have several souls 
and something of this sort might have been expected, the 
Egyptian did not have a shadow-soul and a spirit, khu, 
distinct from a soul, ba. He had a body which survived 
death, a ka or genius and a ba or soul.^ These might be 
duplicated in the case of gods (Re has fourteen kas and 
seven bas) but for a man one apiece was enough. The ka 
is a spirit born with a man and given him by the god. It 
is not part of a man's personality; it guards him particu- 
larly in the next life, so that when a man dies he " goes to 
his ka " in the sky (so even of Osiris, " he went to his ka "). 
The ka is thus the superior guardian and when a man dies 
he is dominated by his ka, who speaks for him to the god 
after death, brings him food, assists and protects him, as a 

1 She is supposed by some scholars to be of Libyan origin, perhaps 
J at first a war-goddess. 

2 Compare Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in 
Ancient Egypt, New York, 1912, p. 56, note 2. 



328 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

sort of guardian angel. Originally the ka is only given to 
a king, afterwards to each and every man. A man's person- 
ality consists in his intelligence (in his belly) and in his 
breath as vital power, symbolized by a cross and called ha, 
a soul, which, however, begins to live as an entity only when 
the man dies, so that ceremonies are performed to make the 
dead " become a ha." Hence food is given to support life 
hereafter and transform the dead into a soul, as Horus's 
eye transformed the dead Osiris into a living soul. His 
body was a part of him without which he could not live; 
he was reanimated and re-embodied. He was not naturally 
immortal. His faculties had to be restored to him by " mak- 
ing him a soul, ha," so that he might exist again as a per- 
son. Thus his " power " and " body " were given to him. 
The belief in the ka made every object finally have a ka 
and led to the naive belief that figures of men placed in the 
tomb could represent men who afterwards were " respond- 
ents," Ushebti, forced to work for the dead man who con- 
trolled them in the Field of Peace, or Elysian Fields, where 
the respondents took the place of slaves in the agricultural 
hereafter.^ In the earliest belief, the soul of the common 
man at least and perhaps of kings lingers in the tomb, for 
which reason so many loaves of bread and jugs of beer had 
to be provided for it. But later, when all went to a better 
world, this food had to be conveyed to heaven for the soul 
and bequests were regularly made for the sole purpose of 
keeping up the nutriment of the dead. The dead, too; were 
at first malicious, seeking to draw others to death ; for which 
reason even Osiris and his followers are kept away from 
the tombs. As, too, even loved ones when dead were thus 
moved to injure their living friends, so the dead also as 
well as the living were afflicted by the dead, and were fur- 
nished with medicine to keep off their attacks. The soul 
in common belief went eventually to heaven. At this time 
it was represented in the form of a bird or grasshopper, 

1 In the same way, figured food in the tombs took the place of 
real food, into which it could be converted by a magic formula. 



THE RELIGION OF EGYPT 3^9 

or it was thought to climb up a ladder, which was guarded 
by gods. They would let no one pass who did not have 
the right formula or open sesame which would let him by. 
Thus magical formulas played always a great part in Egyp- 
tian religion. The cult of lucky days was also an essential 
part of religious ceremony. But oracles were not much 
respected till a late period, when " Jupiter Amon " in Libya 
became renowned chiefly as an oracular god. The cult of 
formulas was connected with a special kind of metempsy- 
chosis. It was not, as elsewhere, a general belief that one 
on dying became reincarnate, but by the virtue of magical 
formulas one might, if one wished, become a sparrow or 
flower. This form, however, ceased at the will of the in- 
dividual and the belief had no moral content, such as is 
found in the scheme of Karma in India. The effect of 
this magical cult was felt in Greece, where, too, the Osiris 
mysteries affected the Orphic mysteries. 

In Egypt itself there came out of this regard for magical 
formulas the so-called Book of the Dead, which was not a 
book at all, but formulas and hymns, of magic purport, to 
aid the dead to cross safely to the other world, to determine 
the judgment, and live happily hereafter. These became a 
collection called " Going from day," the vade mecum of the 
dead. The various parts having been put together in mod- 
ern times, it is now a volume of some two hundred chap- 
ters, containing charms, directions for the ghostly journey, 
hymns, prescriptions for restoring the body, etc. But be- 
sides the magical contents these inscriptions contain a moral 
code and a hymn to the Sun, called chapters 125 and 15, 
respectively, and these relieve the dreary monotony of 
senseless magic. The moral teaching was, in a way, part of 
the magic, for it was to overcome the forty-two gods, who 
were stern censors, that it was carried with the dead. Thus, 
as the amulets and magical formulas guarded against devils 
and monsters, the moral code guarded against the still 
worse monsters called gods, who, if not satisfied with the 
soul's report, would bar it from bliss and give the victim 



330 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

to the *' Devouress " of hell to eat, or, according to a later 
view, the flames of hell tormented him ; which was the " sec- 
ond death/' This collection, called Book of the Dead, be- 
longs to the Osiris cult. To the Re cult belong two in- 
ferior collections, the Book of the Other World and the Book 
of the Gates. The first {am duat) belongs to the XIX 
Dynasty (1350 to 1200 b. c.) and the second depicts the gates 
to the caverns in the under world and tells how to pass 
through them ; it reverts at least in part to the age of the 
Middle Kingdom (about 2000 b. c). The soul might go by 
either of two ways, land or water, a lake of fire lying be- 
tween, which one had to avoid. Consequently the map of 
the next world was a necessary part of one's equipage. 
Then one might by mistake get into the place where souls 
were executed, or find himself going upside down; so there 
were special chapters, entitled Not Entering the Place of 
Execution and Not Walking Head-Downward. Those who 
did not escape but walked head-downward became foes of 
the dead and formulas against these foes were also neces- 
sary. Much of the eschatology and even more of the sac- 
rificial rites may be historical (as they are logical) develop- 
ments from savage African beginnings. 

The future which consisted in being in the boat of Re 
and sailing with the sun-god across the sky, and that others 
which consisted in being an inhabitant of the Fields of 
Peace or Elysian Fields of Osiris, may both be regarded 
as later views compared with that primitive notion of the 
hereafter which held that the soul crept into the tomb and 
came out of it to eat the offering, a view held perhaps 
longest at Memphis, where the cemetery-god v/as Sokaris, 
but probably the original view of all Egyptians before the 
rise of the Osiris cult and the extension of the Re-heaven to 
ordinary people. 

The priesthood and the temple-service of early Egypt are 
not of the same antiquity. Formal temples are not known 
in the earliest texts; they are supposed to have been built 
first during the Middle Kingdom (2160 to 1788). Of what 



THE RELIGION OF EGYPT 331 

sort were the buildings devoted to the gods before that, or 
if there were any besides pyramids and obeHsks, we do not 
know. Probably the tombs served as temples of a sort 
and the sacred stone or tree may be regarded as a natural 
temple. In the temples, when erected, animal figures rep- 
resenting the gods were systematically cared for by priests, 
who gradually formed themselves into a body, partly hered- 
itary like a caste, which eventually exerted a political in- 
fluence sufficient to usurp the throne. Before temples and 
a formal priesthood, the prototypes of the religious fes- 
tivals chronicled by Heredotus may already have existed; 
they celebrated powers of nature personified in more or less 
priapine form and there is no reason to suppose that the 
erotic-religious element was lacking at any time. Perhaps 
there were even temples of this cult that were later de- 
stroyed, for in the first place the Hyksos probably demol- 
ished much of the early architectural work and in the second 
we know that kings sometimes destroyed temples of inferior 
gods, to build those of their own superior divinities. 

The king originally acted as head-priest and he was al- 
ways the over-priest, even when the priesthood was com- 
plete. Nobles and their ladies acted as servants (priests) 
of the local god, but as voluntary officials. The priest offi- 
ciated as magician through the power of the spoken or read 
word, to which a magical power was attributed. It was, 
however, rather through political prestige given by the pow- 
erful king of a city that the priesthood as a whole acquired 
political authority. In time the shaven priest became might- 
ier than the king, who held at first, but had not retained, 
the spiritual dominion. The laity had no part in the serv- 
ice of the god, except as musicians, etc. Festivals, proces- 
sions, sacrifices, the receiving of offerings, were all in the 
hands of priests, whose revenues were enormous, the State 
gradually assuming the cost of maintenance of temples. 
Human sacrifices were discontinued under the Ramses 
realm; they were chiefly for providing guardian spirits for 
new buildings. Crude superstition expressed itself as else- 



332 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

where in magic, philters, luck-charms, amulets, etc. Dreams 
were of import; lucky days were observed. Finally, as a 
means of salvation, magical formulas became as potent as 
morality. 

Of Egyptian contact with the Semitic world we learn 
a good deal by inference as well as by actual historical 
data. As early as the beginning of the third millennium 
before Christ the Egyptians were in touch with Arabia 
and Palestine. Memphis, the capital of this period, was 
known to the later Hebrews also as [Men-]Noph (cf. Hos. 
ix, 6; Isa. xix, 13). Again, in the nineteenth century b. c, 
Palestine was invaded and a city (perhaps Shechem) was 
captured. It was at this time that social ethics was strongly 
developed. Then came the Semitic invasion of, or with, 
the Hyksos (c. 1680), the conquest of Syria by Thutmose 
III in the fifteenth century, the Egyptian control of the 
mines at Sinai, the interchange of letters with foreign po- 
tentates in the fourteenth century,^ the Pharaohs of the 
oppression and of the Exodus in the Nineteenth Dynasty 
(thirteenth century), the building of a sun-temple in Ca- 
naan about 1200; an expedition into Phoenicia in the twelfth 
century by Wenamon; the marriage of Solomon and the 
daughter of Pharaoh (i Kg. iii and ix), the intercourse 
between Shishak and Jeroboam with an invasion of Pales- 
tine, and so on till the time when the Nubians conquered 
Egypt, the period of Sennacherib (2 Kg. xix), the sack 
of Thebes by Ashurbanipal (Nahum ii, 8 calls Thebes No- 
Amon, city of Amon), in 661 b. c, and the death of Josiah 
at Megiddo in 608 b. c. 

Contact with Crete (and so with Greece) is indicated by 
the Egyptian labyrinth of the nineteenth century and other 
works of art and by the similarity in the names Elysium, 
field of Alu, Rhadamanthys, Re of Memphis, etc., as well 
as by the constant wars with the Philistines (of Crete or 
Asia Minor). 

1 Seven of these letters were written by a king of Palestine, c. 
1360 B. c. 



THE RELIGION OF EGYPT 333 

Thutmose III had merged all the priesthoods of the coun- 
try into one sacerdotal body, headed by the priests of Amon, 
local god of Thebes, who as a forfn of Re became the chief 
god in the sixteenth century. The conquests of this king 
(1501-1447 B.C.) extended over Palestine,^ Phoenicia, and 
all Syria; his empire thus established lasted till 1360 B.C., 
during which period Egypt was in close connection with the 
Semitic world, both without and within the borders of 
Egypt. Palestine had been invaded as early as 1850 b. c. 
by Sesostris III. Egypt was no longer an isolated land. 
The kings who give us the great hymn to the Sun and the 
hymn which for the only time in Egyptian history is mono- 
theistic in tone come from a family that had probably been 
vassals of Semitic conquerors. It is in these circumstances 
that a sort of monotheism first appears in Egypt. It appears 
only to disappear immediately. Nothing could seem more 
un-Egyptian than this religious phenomenon, thus suddenly 
rising and as suddenly going, the phenomenon of a One 
God, who disperses all other gods and under whose power 
all the paraphernalia of the old religion are swept away, 
that nothing, not even the consecrated formulas of the old 
creed, may impair his majesty. Scholars, however, are 
rightly loath to recognize anything foreign in this sudden 
exaltation of the " disc of the Sun." It is in fact a good 
instance of what may happen without a " foreign loan." 
We may compare the similar (personal) exalted height 
reached in Mexico and Peru (above, p. 113). In none of 
these cases was there a higher religion from which the loan 
could be made. Moreover, the pantheistic tone leading to 
the quasi-monotheism of Egypt was native. 

The first significant hymn to the Sun itself is that of 
Amenhotep III (c. 1400 b. c), "most splendid of Egyptian 

1 Thutmose carried away from Lebanon a silver statue which may- 
have been the counterpart of the Palestinian Mother-goddess. This 
goddess shows the marks of Hathor and even wears the Egyp- 
tian uraeus symbol. In 1468 b. c. he ruled as far east as the Eu- 
phrates. 



334 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

emperors." ^ In this hymn the sun-god, who is still known 
by his old name, is acclaimed as the god " begetter not be- 
gotten," by whom all men see, the disc of day, creator 
of all and giver of their sustenance, the great hawk of 
the sky, the primordial being who made himself, the sole 
lord who takes captive all lands every day — that is, a 
universal god. But the god is also called here *' a mother, 
profitable to gods and men" (a humane power who is 
both father and mother). The son of this king, also 
called Amenhotep (IV), succeeded his father about 1375 
and established the worship of Tum or Aton, that is the 
disc of the sun, but only in the sense of power or real be- 
ing of the sun as the one god. The old symbol of the sun 
was the hawk or falcon and the triangle contained in the 
pyramid, but as these were purely Egyptian and the young 
king desired that his god should be understood through all 
his realms, he wished a symbol to correspond and took for 
it the disc with rays each terminating in a hand, as the 
old theology had represented the sun with arms. The disc 
represented the heat or the source of power, the essential 
power of the sun. The king made himself high priest of 
this sun at Heliopolis, discarding, however, all the physical 
notions of Re and Amon, the sun-boat, and the voyage 
through subterranean caverns. This god was in fact a 
sun-god only in name; he was a one god and as such op- 
posed to all other worship. The young king gave up poli- 
tics for religion ; he became a zealot, discarded his own 
name because it contained the word Amen (Amon)hotep 
and changed it to "Aton is satisfied " (ikhn-aton), ex- 
punged from all the monuments the word Amon,^ even in 
his father's name, and treated thus all other gods. Finally, 
he left Thebes and built a new capital as the centre of solar 
monotheism or pantheism. 

1 Breasted, op. cit., p. 315. Kings of this period traded with 
Arabians and worked the mines of Sinai. 

2 To destroy the power with the name. Thus Isis obtains power 
over Re when she learns his name by a trick, according to an old 
myth. 



THE RELIGION OF EGYPT 335 

The hymns to this god are the highest expression of reU- 
gious thought in Egypt. Aton is thus addressed : 

" Thy dawning is beautiful in the horizon of the sky [the 
Horizon-Horus was part of his name], O hving Aton, Begin- 
ning of Hfe ! . . . Thou art all (Re) and thy rays encompass 
all lands; all hast thou made, all thou carriest away captive. 
. . . Creator of the germ and maker of the seed, thou givest 
life to the son in the body of the mother, soothing him that he 
may not weep, nursing him in the womb, giving breath to 
animate all. When in the shell the fledgling chirps in the tgg, 
thou givest him breath to preserve him alive, and when thou 
hast brought him to burst the shell, then cometh he forth from 
the egg to chirp with all his might. Manifold are thy works, 
sole God, whose power none other possesseth. Thou hast cre- 
ated the earth according to thy understanding [heart] sole God, 
[beside whom there is no other] ; when thou wast alone didst 
thou create, men and cattle, large and small, all that go upon 
their feet, all that are on high, all that fly with wings, and also 
the foreign lands, Syria and Kush (besides) this land (of 
Egypt). Thou settest each in his place, thou providest all 
their needs ; every one has his possessions and the days of each 
are reckoned; diverse are their tongues, their forms and their 
skins ; thou hast made different the strangers. All the lands far 
away — thou makest their life, a Nile hast thou set in the sky 
for them when it falls (as rain) making waves upon moun- 
tains and like the great flood watering their fields. O how 
excellent are thy designs, O Lord, that there is a Nile in the 
sky for strangers and for the cattle of every land. But our 
Nile cometh for Egypt from the lower world. Thou makest the 
seasons, thou nourishest the gardens with thy rays as a mother 
with her breasts; even the sky afar hast thou made, millions 
of forms thou makest> shining as living Aton, dawning, glitter- 
ing, going ever and ever returning; through thyself alone thou 
makest millions of forms. And thou art he who art in my 
heart ; none knowest thee, save me, thy son Ikhnaton, whom thou 
hast enlightened in thy ways and might. Thou art the Hfe of 
life; through thee men live." 

Shall we say that Ikhnaton was pantheist or monotheist? 
Most of his hymn has perished, for it was copied in only 
one tomb; parts of it or other short hymns are found in 
other tombs at Amarna. A few verses from these show 
much the same thought: 



336 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

"Beautiful is thy rising, O living lord of eternity, Aton; 
thy glow brings life to all hearts; thou fillest Egypt with thy 
love ; God, creator, maker of all, men and cattle large and small, 
trees that grow in the soil, they live when thou dawnest, father 
and mother of all; they see by means of thee and ever their 
heart rejoices because of seeing thee, when thou dawnest as 
their lord. When thou settest in the western horizon, they 
sleep after the manner of the dead, their heads wrapped up, 
their nostrils closed, until in the morning thou risest ; until thou 
risest in the eastern horizon. They lift up their arms to adore 
thee ; thou makest hearts live through thy beauty ; yea, men live 
when thou sendest forth thy rays and every land rejoices. Sing- 
ing, music, and shoutings of joy are all in the hall of the god'' 
(the henhen, pyramid). 

This king, who got tribute even from the Aegaeans, was 
not destined to succeed in his plan of ousting the old gods. 
Scarcely had he died w^hen his work was undone, and a 
conspiracy of priests reinstated the old cult. This panthe- 
istic religion was, therefore, somewhat like that which we 
have seen arise elsewhere as an individual belief, but it 
acquires special dignity from its early occurrence and the 
philosophical basis for the belief. Aton is a pantheistic, 
almost monotheistic god. He is the only god but he is 
in his creation, as it is said, " thou art far, but thy rays 
are on earth." He is god in nature. " The flowers of the 
marshes are drunk with the god; the birds lift their wings 
in adoring him; his beams are in the depths of the sea." 
But if Ikhnaton was " the first individual in history," ^ in 
rejecting time-hallowed myths and standing as a being apart 
from his predecessors, he was peculiarly lacking in judg- 
ment. The people he governed he forced to worship his 
god, frightening laity and priests alike to bow to this di- 
vinity alone — till it was inevitable that the reaction should 
completely overthrow his purpose. Thereafter only an 
echo here and there survived; the faith of Aton was done 
away with, but Atum-Re retained some of his marks, the 
monotheistic phraseology was kept more or less, the feeling 

1 Breasted, op. cit., p. 339. 



THE RELIGION OF EGYPT 337 

that the god was in man remained, the personal element 
which makes a direct bond between worshipper and god 
persisted. The sun-god, restored under his old name, was 
now the god of the poor, the god who hears the prayers 
of all, who brings the Nile for all, but who also like Osiris 
judges all ; Amon-Re " assigneth him that sinneth to the 
fire and the just to the West." In this he resumes the 
function of Re as judge of righteousness, as he appeared 
long before the Osiris cult. In the early texts. Re is al- 
ready a god of truth, piety, and pity, and it is not till toward 
the end of the pyramid age that Osiris becomes ethical and 
judge of ethics. One further conception, that of Re as 
the perfect god, not only as the good shepherd, as he is 
depicted in early texts, but as the restorer of the happy age 
after the deplorable tumults of the tenth Dynasty, about 
2160, when the Feudal Age began, has led to the view that 
this is a Messianic teaching. We possess the complaint 
of one Ipuwer, who laments the sad condition of the land. 
At the end of his lamentation the sage contrasts the pres- 
ent with the past, a happy time, and cries out, *' Where is 
the god today who hath no evil in his heart, doth he sleep? 
Behold his might is not seen." Now this does not seem 
like a prediction or even like a hopeful expression, and to 
call it ** Messianism nearly fifteen hundred years before its 
appearance among the Hebrews " is an exaggeration or 
even contradiction of the data, for we are not entitled to add 
" as yet " to the last clause, and the whole cry is one of 
despair without help or hope.^ 

Some rather forcible analogies may be pointed out be- 
tween the development of Egyptian religion and that of the 
Hebrews, even if we ignore Messianic hopes. Thus the 
nature gods yield their functions, as such, and become in- 

1 Otherwise Lange, followed by Breasted (op. cit., p. 212: "This 
is but the earHest emergence of a social idealism which among the 
Hebrews we call "Messianism"), who concludes that it may have 
been the Admonitions of Ipuwer which inspired the Hebrews with 
the idea of a Messiah. But the Egyptians' ideal is of the past rather 
than of the future. 



338 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

terested in man, being spirits with the same interests as 
those of man; the upholding of moral laws becomes their 
office. Again, the many gods become unified, are on their 
way to unity long before the}^ are recognized as one god. 
Life hereafter is only for a few of nobler sort, who live 
with the sky-god. But the great god is still restricted to 
a small province. With enlargement of the political hori- 
zon the god also is enlarged ; with political disaster, on the 
other hand, the wail of hopelessness and scepticism is heard. 
Then too the paternal side of monotheism produces the 
sense of personal piety and then appear the individuals, 
preacher and psalmist, voicing this sense of personal re- 
sponsibility, as well as continuing the sense of social justice 
derived from antiquity. Finally in the substitution of magic 
and form for ethical verities, as when even the sinner can 
magically compel his heart not to testify against him, and 
when the priest and sacerdotalism take the place of inward 
piety, are involved decadence and fall — points admirably 
brought out in the work of Professor Breasted already cited. 
But we cannot abandon the Egyptian religion without 
consideration of a few more points. What strikes one 
most strongly is that the people are intensely prosaic, not 
romantic, not very imaginative, not at all philosophic. A 
few great minds think great thoughts, a few love beauty; 
but the people as a whole are repellantly material, their 
minds are primitive minds, thinking always in concrete 
images ; their virtues are practical. Again, an unbiassed 
view of the religion shows that the concrete imagery of 
the mass made it necessary for them to preserve the rudest 
conceptions. In the case of Osiris, plants sprout from his 
body. In the celebration of his resurrection, the " passion 
play " was a rude contest between the forces of good and 
evil carried out by the crowd of worshippers whose reli- 
gious zeal voiced itself in war-cries and resulted in a free 
fight, where heads were broken and lives were lost. Nor 
must we forget that the popular conception of Osiris was 
that of a phallic god, whose effigy was carried through the 



THE RELIGION OF EGYPT 339 

Streets in a howling Bacchanalian procession, in which the 
phallic sign was conspicuously exaggerated; such traits in 
short as we find in other nature-religions. 

Since Osiris was the chief god of Egypt for some two 
thousand years, we may well close this account of the na- 
tional religion with a closer examination of those features 
which made the strongest appeal to his worshippers. Let 
us assume for the nonce an Egyptian environment. Our 
great god incorporates that spirit of productivity which 
shows itself in the source of life, the Nile, and in the field 
made verdant and fruitful by him. Long since he was king 
of our land, the son of Earth, who had given him this land 
to care for. His rule was beneficent, he established jus- 
tice and slew his foes. Beside him stood ever his sister- 
wife, Isis, who cared for him and protected him, as queen 
of the land. Osiris ruled the North, but in the South was 
his brother Set, storm, darkness, desolation, opposed to 
light and love and bountifulness. Set prevailed, either ^ 
luring the good god into ambush or openly assassinating 
and dismembering him ; at any rate, " his brother Set felled 
him to earth" (some say, he was drowned). But when 
Isis heard of this she mourned and searched for her hus- 
band, " sadly going through this land nor stopping till 
she found him " ; and at last she found him at Byblos or 
Abydos (two versions). Isis and Nephthys her sister to- 
gether searched and found him, in the form of birds going 
hither and thither, and at last discovering his body (or col- 
lecting it) they embalmed it (or Anubis came from heaven 
to do this) ; but out of his tomb grew a sycamore which 
embraced the body of Osiris, symbol of the god's imperish- 
able life, and out of him even dead came forth life for 
Isis, who bore him a son to avenge him. This was Horus, 
who, grown strong, came forth from the Delta, where Set 
had sought to slay him, and finally overthrew the southern 
god ; but in the conflict he lost an eye. Then the god Thoth, 

1 Here and below two versions of the tale are given. 



340 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

the wise god, spat upon the wound and healed it, but Horus 
took the eye and found Osiris and by giving him the eye 
brought him back to Hfe, reuniting his dismembered Hmbs 
(or taking off the bandages of the embalmed corpse). 
Then came the triumphant cry : " He wakes, Osiris wakes, 
the weary god awakes and stands; he controls his body 
again. Stand up, thou shalt not end, thou shalt not perish." 
This is the cry that has echoed through the years, *' thou 
shalt not perish." But Set was judged in the tribunal of 
the gods, for the strife between them was adjudicated by 
the divine Enneads, and Osiris was vindicated. And Thoth 
gave the verdict : " All the gods are satisfied, all the gods 
of the earth, all gods south and north, west and east, gods 
of the nomes and gods of the cities." And Set from that 
time on bore Osiris upon his back, as Atlas bears the earth.^ 
But Osiris was proclaimed king. 

This is the drama, the overthrow of Set, which the pas- 
sion play presents in eight scenes year by year. And now 
let us turn to the final scene, where Osiris, judge of the 
dead, receives the soul. For each must die, but each, if 
good and kind in life, dies but to rise again; each is him- 
self an Osiris. So the soul, armed with magical formulas 
to guide it safely to the judgment hall, comes at last be- 
fore the god who died and rose again and who now stands 
as judge of all the dead. Forty-two gods sit around him 
and the soul makes its plea : " I have not slain ; nor 
robbed ; I have not stirred up strife ; I have not lied ; I 
have not lost my temper ; I have not committed adultery ; 
I have not blasphemed the god; nor reviled the king; nor 
stolen temple-food," etc., etc. Then the soul speaks to 
the gods : " Hail to you, gods, report no evil of me to 
this god whom you follow ; speak the truth for me to the 
god of all; save me from babi (the Devouress), who eats 
the entrails of the dead on the day of judgment. I come 
to you without sin, I have done that wherewith the gods 

^Breasted, op. cit., p. z^- 



THE RELIGION OF EGYPT 34^ 

are satisfied. I have given bread to the hungry, cloth- 
ing to the naked, a ferry to him without a boat. I have 
given offerings to the gods and for the dead. I am pure 
of mouth and of hands." Then the god Osiris upon his 
throne with Isis and Nephthys behind him and the sun- 
god's Ennead, the Nine Gods of HeHopoHs, look upon " the 
balance of Re " (both indications of the originally solar 
court of justice) and as the balance is manipulated by Anu- 
bis, Thoth presides over the pen and writing-tablet, to re- 
cord the verdict. Behind him lurks the Devouress, to de- 
vour the sinner if the verdict goes against him. Destiny 
and the two goddesses of birth look on, as do the divine 
spirits called Taste and Intelligence (in some cases Truth 
escorts the soul into the hall). Anubis calls for the heart 
of the dead man. This is put into the balance and on the 
other side a feather, emblem of truth. Then Thoth says, 
" I have judged. No sin is found in him. His soul is 
justified by the great balances," and the Nine Gods say, 
" He is sinless, the Devouress shall have no power over 
him; let him have the bread of Osiris and a domain in the 
field of offerings." Horus then leads him to Osiris, saying, 
" His heart has come forth righteous ; he has no sin ; Thoth 
has judged him; he has written it down; the Nine Gods 
have spoken." Then the soul kneels to Osiris and says, 
" Behold me, I have not sinned, I have not lied ; let me be 
of thy beloved and of thy followers." This is the end of 
the drama. The god who died an innocent death receives 
into his kingdom his follower, if he, too, be innocent. No 
sinner may live with him; the beast that rends the entrails 
devours him who is found unworthy. Unquestionably a 
moral power underlay this belief. Yet it must not be for- 
gotten that the moral side of religion underlay also the cult 
of the sun-god. And it must be said of both cults and 
of the combination, which results in Osiris instead of Re 
being the judge hereafter, that magic goes hand in hand 
with morality. If in the final judgment morality decides 
the issue, yet magical formulas not at all moral are neces- 



342 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

sary to bring the dead man before the court, failing which 
he is liable to go astray, become a homeless or impious 
ghost, irrespective of his previous morality. 

The sun-cult, with its monotheistic tendency, as com- 
pared with the Osiris cult, became rather a philosophy 
suited for higher minds, while the Osiris cult appealed to 
the people by virtue of its human sympathy. Osiris had 
the advantage attaching to all gods who have themselves 
been human. ^ 

In summing up the religion of Egypt, we may say that 
the gods are primarily of two sorts, animal gods and nat- 
ural phenomena. Half-animal gods are a later product. 
Despite their forms they are wholly anthropopathic. That 
local gods imply, as Petrie asserts, an antecedent mono- 
theism, is an erroneous induction. Each little place had 
its own little Power as chief god, but it also had others. 
The gods in general appear to be indigenous local spirits, 
later synthesized, as people came together. The Osiris cult 
is native to the Delta. In it is found the prototype of two 
great religious features, which redeem the inanity of the 
general Egyptian cult. The first is the image of the man- 
god, suffering, dying, resurrected, and become the saviour 
of men. Not less remarkable (and rarer) is the ethical 
importance of the belief, unknown to the early Semites, that 
a future beyond the grave is conditioned by the ethical 
quality of the life here.^ 

Unimportant, though of some interest, is the fact that 
the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife is like an old Egyp- 
tian story ; ^ that the Christian agape and monastic estab- 

1 On the relation between this myth and others of like character, 
in which a dying man-god is revered as type of resurrection after 
death, see particularly Frazer's Adonis Attis, Osiris, London, 1914. 

2 Compare H. O. Taylor, Ancient Ideals, New York, igo6. 

3 Dr. Daniel Voelter, Die Patriarchen Israel's und die Aegyptische 
Mythologie, Leiden, 1912, has sought to show that the whole his- 
tory of Joseph is nothing but the Osiris myth in the form of an 
Israelite legend ; but his conclusion seems forced. The Joseph 
story may have inspired or reflected the Egyptian (1209-1205 b, c.) 
Tale of Two Brothers. Compare on this tale Renouf-Sayce, Rec~ 



THE RELIGION OF EGYPT 343 

lishment may have come from Egypt (the Therapeutae of 
Egypt who had an agape, were, however, a Jewish sect) ; 
that the Madonna and Child as an art-form is an imitation 
of Isis-Horus; and that a Logos-germ may be seen in the 
Creator-god's creation through the thought or word. He- 
braic bull-worship and serpent-worship may have been 
brought from Egypt or may as well have been native 
products due to the same stimulus. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Alfred Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, Lon- 
don, 1897; Die Toten und ihre Reiche im Glauhen der 
alien Aegypten, Leipzig, 1900. 

G. Steindorff, The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, New 
York, 1905. 

J. H. Breasted, A History of Egypt, 2nd ed., New York, 1911; 
Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, 
New York, 1912. 

W. M. Flinders Petri e, A History of Egypt from the Earliest 
Times, New York, 1905; The Religion of Ancient Egypt, 
London, 1908; Egypt and Israel, New York, 1911. 

E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, London, 1904; 
Egyptian Idea of the Future Life, London, 1899; The 
Book of the Dead, London, 1899. ^^^ Book of the Dead 
has also been translated by P. Le Page Renouf and E. H. 
Naville, London, 1 893-1907. 

W. Max Miiller, Mythology of All Races, vol. xii, Boston, 1918. 

ords of the Past, London, 1889-93, New Series, vol. ii, p. I37ff., 
and Sir G. Maspero, Les C antes populaires de I'Egypte ancienne, 
Paris, 1882, now translated as Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt, 
London, 191 5, by Mr. Johns from the fourth French edition. 



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 

BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION 

The foundations of Babylonian history have been mate- 
rially strengthened in the last decades. Recently discovered 
inscriptions reveal records of kings of the fifth millennium 
B. c. ; new dynasties have been found ; fresh light has been 
cast upon the relations of Mesopotamia with the West. A 
certain readjustment of dates has in consequence seemed 
to be necessary. Sargon, whose control of the Euphrates 
valley foreshadowed Semitic supremacy, may be restored 
to his old position as king circa 3800 B.C. instead of 2800; 
Hammurabi (perhaps Amraphel, Gen. xiv. i) may be of 
2200 B. c, instead of 1950 b. c. But some scholars still 
think it impossible to ascribe so remote a date to Sargon, 
though Nabonidus (555-539 B.C.) says that Naram-Sin, 
son of Sargon, lived 3200 years before his time and to 
other scholars this statement appears to be supported by 
the newly found lists of kings, among whom figure Etana 
(Ethan of the Bible) and Gilgamesh, and even lamnuz, 
hitherto known only as legendary and divine beings. A 
conservative estimate may, however, refer the beginnings 
of Babylonian history to at least the fourth millennium 
B. c. 

That Babylonian culture was at first largely Sumerian is 
generally admitted. But whence the (future) Babylonians 
first came, and whether they found prior Sumerian settle- 
ments north of the Persian Gulf is not certain. All that 
we know positively about the early period is that long be- 
fore the supremacy of Babylon there were various small 
southern sites, Nippur, Lagash, Erech, etc., apparently of 
Sumerian origin, while farther north Agade (Akkad) and 

344 



BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION 345 

Sippar represented a primitive Semitic stock. Both groups, 
separately or together, were at sundry times opposed to 
Elam, till Hammurabi, sixth king of an entirely new dynasty 
(the first Babylonian), of Amorite origin, routed Elam once 
for all, and Babylon became supreme till overthrown by the 
Kassites and Assyrians.^ 

The Sumerian population of Lagash, once the chief 
southern town, for defence against the Semites combined 
with other Sumerians and gradually formed a confederacy 
of the Southern Sumerians against the Semites of the 
North and East. The first king to become king of both 
North and South was Sargon, whose concealed birth and 
escape in a box set afloat on the river is a parallel to that 
of Moses, and also to that of a hero of the Hindu epic. 
Sargon became king of Sumer and Akkad, but this dynasty 
did not last long. Shamash, sun-god, was the chief deity of 
Akkad or Agade. A patesi or lord of Lagash was Gudea, 
whose religious zeal aided the development of temple- 
structures.- 

About 2000 B. c, Hammurabi of the first Babylonian dy- 
nasty welded all the people of the various Sumerian and 
Semitic strongholds into one State, improved the old in- 
herited code of laws, and gave a permanent form to the 
discordant religious elements, in that the special god of 
Babylon was made representative (substitute) for the city- 
gods, who inevitably had to disappear or become connected 
with the great god. The older Semitic and Sumerian gods, 
sun, moon, and Ishtar, were kept thus under the Baby- 

1 Who the Sumerians were, even of what stock, no one knows. 
Apparently they came down from the eastern or northern hills, as 
their gods were described as of the mountain (house). They had a 
predilection for the moon-god and for sundry goddesses (Nin- 
divinities) afterwards semitized as male (gods whose names re- 
tained the nin-). The first three kings of the Assyrians were of 
Hittite stock and the Hittites were perhaps Aryans. 

2 According to the old reckoning, Sargon and his son Naram-Sin 
would belong to the middle of the third millennium and Gudea 
would be dated c. 2350 b. c. They may all be m.uch older (see 
above). Naram-Sin was one of the few deified kings. 



34^ THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Ionian (Amorite) god Marduk; the Amorite Adad or thun- 
derer (Rammon) was added to the pantheon; and the gods 
of the small towns became relatives of the great Marduk, 
whose compound name probably means Amorite-sun-god. 

The influence of this Babylonian religion upon the West- 
ern world used to be regarded as overwhelming ; but it was 
less early, less direct, and altogether less important than 
was once assumed. It probably had no early influence upon 
Egypt and very little upon Greece. The mother-goddess 
worship, conspicuous in all Babylonia, was not confined to 
Mesopotamia but was generally Semitic. Certain legends, 
such as the story of Actaeon devoured by his hounds, and 
Adonis mourned by Aphrodite, drifted into Greek mythology 
from Semitic sources (not necessarily Babylonian), but 
Greek religion vv^as not affected by Babylon in any impor- 
tant phase.^ Even the neighbouring, though later, religion 
of Zoroaster was not markedly affected by the Babylonian 
cult.2 

The Assyrians, from Ashur in the north, appear to have 
been at first in close contact with the Hittites. But the 
Assyrians were still a rough mountain race when Baby- 
lon was already a commercial city. Like all these peoples 
they worshipped a god of the clan (Ashur) as well as the 
sun- and storm-gods. The original inhabitants of Ashur 
seem to have been neither Sumerians nor Semites,^ but, if 

1 Greek mysteries have no Semitic counterpart. Incense came to 
Greek religion from the East, but not before the eighth century. 
The shepherd loved by Ishtar and changed by her into a leopard 
devoured by his hounds is recast as Artemis, Actaeon and the stag 
(myth not religion). Compare Farnell, Greece and Babylon, Edin- 
burgh, 191 1, pp. 290 and 314. 

2 Anahita as a form of the fruitful mother-goddess was probably 
a late adaptation. Stress has been laid on the m.ajesty of the 
Zoroastrian god, on seven as a holy number, etc., and even on the 
fact that a list of Assyrian gods contains the name of Ormuzd ; 
but these fail to prove that Zoroastrianism was drawn from, or was 
even influenced materially by Babylonian ideas. Astral gods were 
not early but late, as compared with the original Babylonian pan- 
theon. 

3 King, History of Babylon, London, 1915, p. 141. 



BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION 347 

Hittite, they were later largely reinforced by Semitic ele- 
ments. They are first heard of about 2400 b. c. From 
about 1800 B. c, when Hittite power centred in Asia Minor, 
the Assyrians made inroads upon Babylon, but they did not 
become important till the fifteenth century. Under Tig- 
lath-Pileser (1130-1100 B.C.) they conquered Babylon, 
which at this time had been under Kassite dominion (1750- 
1175 B.C.). Assyrian supremacy is represented by the 
great names of Sennacherib (705-681 b. c), Esarhaddon 
(680-668 B.C.), and Ashurbanipal (668-626 b. c.).^ The 
seat of the empire had been transferred first to Calah and 
then to Ninevah. Babylon was destroyed in 689, Ninevah 
in 606 B. c. Cyrus, who founded the Persian empire in 550 
b. c, annexed Media, which had helped Babylon overthrow 
Assyria. It was a new Babylon which Nebuchadrezzar II 
built (604-562 B. c.) ; to which, after besieging and taking 
Jerusalem (597 and 586 B.C., 2 Kg. xxiv.), he transported 
the Jews. 

But as the Assyrians became, in dress and language, one 
with the Babylonians, so in religion. Except for Ashur 
and a special predilection for the Amorite god Adad-Ram- 
man, the Assyrian pantheon coincided with that of Babylon. 
This again, in the main, united, by the process already 
described, with that of the Sumerians, Enlil of Nippur, 
Anu of Erech, Ea of Eridu, Nabu of Borsippa, Nin of 
Lagash with Bau, the great Mother-goddess. The West- 
ern Semites, however, did not affect female divinities ex- 
cept as Ishtar in various forms or names ; the others they 
let die. Thus Nina, a water-goddess, becomes Nina Ishtar 
of Nineveh. As in Egypt, by merging gods there arose 
triads, of which the chief was Anu, Enhl, and Ea (sky, 
earth, and water). Anu of Erech was sun and sky; Enlil 

1 The close connection of these kings with the Western Semites 
may be remembered by comparing 2 Kg. xv. 19, 2gt; ib. xvi. lof. 
(Ahaz) ; Sargon's overthrow of Samaria, 722 B.C.; Sennacherib's 
intercourse with Hezekiah, 2 Kg. xx. 12 ; Manasseh as vassal of 
Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, 2 Kg. xix, ; 2 Chron. xxxiii., etc. 



348 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

of Nippur was a mountain-god of storm and earth; and 
Ea of Eridu was representative of water and magical wis- 
dom, either because, as in Scandinavian myth, the two are 
naturally united, or because the priests of Ea had accumu- 
lated a special amount of magical matter and the god had 
thus become authoritative. Nebo or Nabu (compare Nebu- 
chadrezzar) was a water-god of Borsippa later subjected 
to Bel-Marduk, the greater god across the river, but asso- 
ciated with him: "Bel boweth; Nebo stoopeth " (Is. xlvi. 
i; Ix. 7). With the rise of Babylonian Marduk, Ea is 
made father and Nebo son of Marduk, and other local gods 
similar in nature are identified, the solar element as Sha- 
mash, Ninib, Nusku, Nergal, Marduk; the lunar element, 
as Sin and Nannar (northern and southern representatives), 
with Ningal as his consort. One of these, Nergal, was a 
Kuthah god brought into Palestine (722 B.C.). He was 
destructive (war and pestilence) and thus became identi- 
fied with Ninib, sun as war-god. While most of the female 
deities were merely earth-spirits or aspects of their male 
consorts, Ereshkigal, consort of Nergal, was a still im- 
portant mistress of the under-world; Bau (above) had a 
great New Year's festival; and Ishtar or Nana of Erech 
received honour everywhere, both as a war-goddess and as 
a fertility-spirit. As Venus she was regarded as the daugh- 
ter of the Moon, Sin. As moon-goddess she appears as 
Ashtart of the Phoenicians, Astoreth of the Canaanites. 
Her symbols are dove and pomegranate, a voluptuous 
Venus as contrasted with war-like Ishtar. The Assyrians 
called her Our Lady, Belit, and distinguished between the 
Ishtar of Arbela, the war-goddess, and Ishtar of Nineveh, 
the voluptuous goddess, who some have imagined was orig- 
inally Hittite. 

At Babylon, Anu, Enlil, and Marduk, as a triad, show 
that Ea has lost to his " son '' the third place. Marduk 
in fact at first interprets and then, as mediator, ousts his 
" father " and becomes as '* good shepherd " the type of a 
protecting god. He is usually interpreted as an Eridu sun- 



BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION 349 

god, but he is perhaps rather a parallel to Amurru of the 
Amorites, Ashur of the Ashurites or Assyrians, etc., a 
clan-god, who cared in every way for his people and so 
was typified as god of sun and life and of power and war. 

It would be useless to analyse all the triads of this sort, 
Shamash, Sin, and Ramman, or Nergal, Ramman, and 
Nana, etc. The lesser gods are grouped as Annunaki and 
Igigi, spirits of earth and heaven. In Babylon, Marduk as 
Bel-Marduk absorbed the other divine powers, as he took 
the " lofty house " of Ea from Eridu and set it up in his 
new home. By thus absorbing gods Marduk might have 
become sole deity, but neither he nor Ashur became God, 
though Ashur as the sun, yet without an image, was even 
better fitted to make of the religion a monotheism, espe- 
cially as he became the head of a supreme temporal power.^ 
To meet the need of syncretism, however, old hymns ad- 
dressed to other gods were made to say that Marduk was 
identical with each, or rather that each was Marduk, in 
order that the incantation, in which names had to be used 
with care, might be effective. So tales told of other gods 
were recast in honour of Marduk. Marduk's rival, of Bor- 
sippa, Nabu, regained glory in the West as god of wisdom 
(so in Moab) and culture, as well as water and agricul- 
ture. In Assyria he became the god of the stylus, of 
scholars, and at Borsippa of astrology. 

To these gods were made sacrifices of animals, bread, 
fruit, wine, milk, all ready to eat and actually eaten at once 
by the priests, a communion service of the Mexican type, in 
which gods and worshippers share. To the gods were sung 
hymns mixed deftly with old magical formulas, so that 
exorcism united with requests for aid, magic with religion. 
Both divination (see below) and prayer reveal that the 
Babylonians were true Semites after the western type, that 
is they cared little for the next world but very much for 
this. The warlike Assyrians have been said to resemble 

1 He was represented, like Aton in Egypt, by a disc, inscribed 
with a bowman as sign of martial power. 



350 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

the Romans, with whom there may have been even a re- 
mote racial affinity ; in contrast, the commercial Babylonians 
resembled their own kin, Phoenicians and Carthaginians. 
For the striking difference between Babylonian and Assyrian 
is that the former is before all else a humane business-man 
and the latter is a cruel blood-thirsty warrior. Hammu- 
rabi was protagonist of peaceful civiHzation ; Ashurbanipal 
delighted to pierce his captives' eyes with his own hand. 
Hence Assyria had no native civilization ; she had to absorb 
that of others. The Assyrians were eastern Aztecs, the 
Babylonians they conquered were their Mayas. What is 
known as Assyrian literature is the literature the Assy- 
rians appropriated and possessed by right of conquest. 

Around the gods have gathered Babylonian tales of espe- 
cial interest to the student of religions, as they are primitive 
parallels to the Hebrew legends. Creation, Adam, Noah 
appear here in a ruder form. We may take these up in 
their Biblical order. 

In the Babylonian story, creation is preceded by a state 
in which chaos and order struggle as personified beings. 
When " heaven and earth were nameless," is the time 
when the drama begins. Only the watery waste existed, 
called Apsu, Mummu, and Tiamat, later differentiated into 
sweet and salt waters. Possibly we are to interpret the 
two as producing together the monsters born of them or 
of Tiamat, who represents the barren floods of Chaos, her- 
self the greatest monster (T'hom) of her brood. But there 
is no attempt to revert to nothing; even earth was, only 
it was nameless. " floods covered heaven and earth." 
This raises the question whether the ensuing struggle was 
not a nature-myth rather than a real creation-story. The 
flood and storm of the tale are interpreted by some scholars 
as wintry phenomena yielding to the spring-time sun-god. 
What lay back of Tiamat and Apsu is not revealed. Other 
accounts make the gods as old as chaos. Chaos bred mon- 
sters and then the divine Heaven and Earth, as Anshar and 



BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION 35 ^ 

Kishar, ancestors of Anu/ Enlil, and Ea, prepared for 
conflict, to maintain order. But they are not the aggressors ; 
only the elements 'of disorder are aggressive. The eleven 
opposing monsters of Chaos are created by Tiamat and 
headed by Kingu, to whom Tiamat gives the tablets of 
destiny and whom she makes her consort. The peace-loving 
gods seem to fear : they send a messenger to Tiamat, " May 
her liver be pacified, her heart softened." Here the ac- 
count becomes confused and what was probably depicted in 
the first form of the legend as the victory of Ea or of Anu 
(in the Erech version Anu is victor) is manipulated in 
maiorem gloriam of Marduk, for in this story Marduk 
reigns. In this version, too, Ea and Anu appear to dispose 
of Apsu and Mummu, while the greater Tiamat is reserved 
for the favourite god. At any rate, we next see Bel-Marduk, 
at the command of his father, going joyfully into battle, 
after preparing for the combat by making weapons, bow, 
lance, club, lightning-bolt, storm-winds, and a net where- 
with to catch Tiamat. The gods get drunk with joy, an- 
ticipating victory and hailing Marduk as already lord of 
the universe. On Storm (his chariot) he rushes forth, 
haloed with light, from which Kingu shrinks. Him follow 
the seven winds. Tiamat, however, fears him not, but 
when Marduk challenges her, she fights, " raging and shak- 
ing with fury," yet all in vain. For Marduk stifles her 
with a poisonous gas ("evil wind"), and then transfixes 
her, also taking the tablets from Kingu and netting the 
other monsters. But Tiamat he cuts in two, making one 
half of her the sky, which is then bolted, to keep the wa- 
ters from descending; as in Genesis the upper waters are 
debarred from those below by a " firmament." Marduk 
completes his victory by retaining the names and powers 
of the gods, given him for the fray, and assigns them 
their astrological spheres and stellar forms.^ He then 

1 Anshar and Anu, forms of the same word, may be one. 

2 By taking the " names " of the gods he assumes their powers. 



352 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

creates man out of his blood and bone, that the gods may 
have worshippers. 

This myth recalls the " watery waste " of Genesis, but 
only remotely. Man is here blood-relation of his god. In 
the corresponding Sumerian version, creation is effected by 
Aruru with Marduk as secondary helpmate, showing the 
feminine divinity as mother-goddess. It is she, perhaps 
one with Ishtar, who creates Enkidu out of clay. 

Another story suggests Adam and his fate. Adapa is 
a worshipper of Ea. He is catching fish near his lord's 
temple, when the south wind, blowing up the Persian Gulf, 
overwhelms him. In self-defence Adapa breaks the wings 
of the wind. Anu, being wroth at this, demands that 
Adapa shall come to heaven and explain his act. Ea now 
advises Adapa what to do. On arriving (Ea says), he will 
be offered the food and water of death and must refuse 
them. Adapa goes to heaven and first flatters Tammuz, 
who guards the gate, by telling him that he (Adapa) is 
wearing mourning, not described, for him. Anu accepts 
his exculpation. Then all the gods seem kindly disposed. 
Apparently thinking that, since the man has got to heaven, 
he might as well be made immortal, they offer him the food 
and drink of life. But, with Ea's warning in mind, Adapa 
refuses both, and so fails to attain immortality. So in 
Genesis iii. 22 it is said, " lest he put forth his hand and 
take also of the tree of Hfe and eat, and live for ever." 
Adapa also puts on clothes given by the gods, but not to 
cover his nakedness. Sayce regards Adapa as one with 
Adam, whose story, however, has to do with two trees, 
one of knowledge and one of life. Yahweh Elohim in one 
does not wish man to become immortal. The recast Hebrew 
form prohibits the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowl- 
edge, with the implication that, if he obey, man may remain 
in the garden for ever ; as Gen. iii. 3, which says, " ye shall 
not eat of it or touch it, lest ye die," must originally have 

e ** set up the stars as likenesses " of the gods and also " fixed 
the year." 



BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION 353 

been a reference to a deadly fruit. So the serpent says, 
" Ye shall not die," pretending that it is not the tree of 
death but of life. The substitution of a tree of knowledge 
(of good and evil) for the death-tree appears to be a later 
touch. The serpent also may be Babylonian, as a seal- 
cylinder contains a group of a man and woman and serpent 
about a tree (of life).^ 

The tree of life appears also in the Gilgamesh legend. 
Gilgamesh may have been an Elamite king who conquered 
Erech. His name, as already stated, is found in dynastic 
lists. In the story, he is a demigod hero. To overcome 
Gilgamesh, the creator-goddess (Aruru; see above) forms 
a man of heavenly sort (" of Anu ") : " Aruru washes her 
hands ; she takes a bit of clay ; she throws it on the ground ; 
so she creates Enkidu." He is an inhuman, hairy crea- 
ture living with animals. But, protected by Shamash, by 
means of a hunter (sddu) and a woman,^ Gilgamesh in- 
duces Enkidu to come over to his side. Enkidu, through 
his companionship with the others rendered quite human, 
supports Gilgamesh and fights against Khumbaba (perhaps 
an Elamite). After Gilgamesh, with Enkidu, has con- 

1 Jastrow, Hebrew and Babylonian Traditions, New York, 1914, pp. 
52-61. The Adapa story comes from a time when Eridu, now 
ninety miles from the Persian Gulf, must have been close to it; 
otherwise the worshipper would not be on the Gulf, " fishing for 
his lord," who is evidently close at hand. As the Gulf, owing to 
silting of the river, recedes ninety feet a year, Eridu, at this rate, 
would have been on the shore of the Gulf 5280 years ago. This 
would fix Adapa's exploit as occurring shortly after 3365 b. c, which 
is perhaps the time of the story. 

2 Nimrod also is a hunter (said) ; he stands for Babylonian cul- 
ture. Compare Genesis x. lo-ii; " Nimrod's kingdom was Babel, 
Erech, Accad, and Calnah, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land 
he went forth into Assyria and built Nineveh." The name Samson 
(Shimshon) is one with that of Gilgamesh's divine patron, Sha- 
mash, the sun-god. Samson's long hair may be a solar attribute, 
but his adventures with lions, his love-affairs, and other traits link 
him rather with Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Hercules (though this is 
doubtful) appears to be a Greek form of this myth, which has de- 
scended upon the fabulous Alexander, seeking in India the fountain 
of life. Professor Jastrow has recently shown that Enkidu is a 
double of Gilgamesh. 



354 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

quered this foe, Ishtar desires him to be her lover; but 
he repHes that the sad fate of her lovers is too well known : 
" Tammuz thou causest to weep every year ; thou didst 
love a bird and crush it; the lion thou loved'st thou didst 
bury again and again" (etc.). Ishtar complains to her fa- 
ther Anu, who creates a strong bull to destroy Gilgamesh. 
While Enkidu holds it, Gilgamesh slays it. Ishtar then 
curses Gilgamesh; but Enkidu throws the slain bull in her 
face and threatens to slay her likewise. Ishtar mourns a 
day for the bull, assembling all the sacred prostitutes, her 
priestesses, of Erech. But now disease assails Enkidu, who 
dies and is lost to Gilgamesh. When the latter also begins 
to pine away (decline of sun-power after the solstice?), he 
fears for himself the fate of his lost friend and thinks 
of Utnapishtim, who alone of men has escaped the fate of 
death and may give him good advice. He tries to find this 
immortal man, meeting lions on the way, but conquering 
them with the help of Sin, and comes at last to Mashu, the 
mountain that reaches to the lower world guarded by scor- 
pion-men. These he passes and comes thence to the sea 
crossed only by Shamash. It is an ocean on the way to 
the underworld and is guarded by the maiden Sabitu, who 
tells him that all men must die, and advises him to return 
and eat and drink and love, while he may. This clearly 
indicates that after death no joy remains. With the help 
of the sailor of Utnapishtim, however, Gilgamesh crosses 
these " waters of death " and, finally finding the " long 
lived '* one, first inquires how, if to escape death is impos- 
sible, Utnapishtim, who is also human, is still alive. ^ Ut- 
napishtim explains that he escaped at the time of the deluge 
and gives the tale thereof. But his wife pities Gilgamesh 
and prepares a root with the condiment shiba (old age) 
which she gives him to eat, after which he has to bathe in 
the fountain of Hfe and also to eat of another plant. But 
as he reaches down for this latter plant, which will finally 

1 Utnapishtim in one version is alive, but weak and weary, not 
altogether like a god. 



BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION 355 

make him immortal, a serpent (demon) snatches it away. 
So Gilgamesh has to return; but first he gets permission 
from Nergal, king of Aralu (the lower world), to question 
the deceased Enkidu in regard to the condition of the dead. 
The daemonium or spirit of Enkidu then rises up like a 
wind, as the spirit of Samuel rises before Saul (i Sam. 
xxviii. 7-9), and Gilgamesh questions him. 

The story of the flood as told by Utnapishtim is as fol- 
lows: A flood was sent upon the city of Shuruppak after 
Ea had warned it and at the same time had told Utnapishtim 
in . a dream to build a ship and save his family. Enlil 
(Bel) had cast out Ea and so Utnapishtim was safe on 
Ea's waters but not on Bel's earth. The lord of the whirl- 
wind, Ramman, brought on the deluge-storm, cyclone, which 
lasted seven days (another account says six), frightening 
men and gods ; as it is said : " Brother does not look after 
brother. Men care not for another. In the heavens, even 
the gods are terrified at the storm. They take refuge in the 
height of Anu. Like dogs the gods cowered at the edge 
of the heavens." 

The storm is further described: Ishtar is frightened 
and reproaches herself that she assented to this destruction : 
" I created and I have destroyed my own creatures." Ac- 
cording to these words, the storm is not regarded as a pun- 
ishment. Enlil is represented as opposed to the saving of 
man. All the gods sat down and wept ; for men had been 
turned to clay and there was naught but water. After 
seven days, however, the flood ceased, and shortly after 
this an island appeared and the ship approached the moun- 
tain Nisir, meaning " salvation," where it remained for 
seven days. Then Utnapishtim tells how he sought to know 
whether the waters had gone down elsewhere : " When 
the seventh day approached I sent forth a dove. The dove 
flew about, but finding no resting-place, returned. Then I 
sent forth a swallow. The swallow flew about, but finding 
no resting-place, returned. Then I sent forth a raven. The 
raven flew off, and seeing that the waters had decreased, did 



356 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

not return." Utnapishtim then gets out and on the top of 
the mountain sacrifices to the gods, who " smelled the sweet 
flavour and collected like flies," but Enlil is excluded, since 
without consultation he caused the flood (says Ishtar) " and 
handed over my creation to destruction." EnHl approaches, 
sees the ship, and angry that any one is saved, wishes to 
know who is responsible. Ninib tells him that Ea must 
have saved Utnapishtim, for Ea alone is wise enough 
("knows all arts"). Then Ea speaks: "Thou shouldst 
punish the sinner, but be merciful and not destroy all," 
and of himself he says : " I did not reveal the decision 
of the great gods (to cause a flood), but I sent a warning 
dream to Atra-Khasis, which told him thereof." Atra- 
Khasis, the " very wise one," is Utnapishtim, the name 
which, in inverted form khasisatra was converted into 
Xisuthros, or Sisouhros, the hero of the flood in the clas- 
sical writers who followed Berosus.^ Ea means that he 
merely told the hero to build a ship. So Enlil became 
reconciled and blessed Utnapishtim and said : " Hitherto 
he was human; but now he and his wife shall be as gods; 
he shall dwell in the distance at the confluence of streams," 
that is at the confluence of the four rivers of the garden of 
Paradise, Euphrates, Tigris, Karun, and Kercha. The ac- 
count ends with the assurance that there will not be another 
such flood. The structure of the ark points to its being a 
vessel of the Euphrates. The different versions in the 
Bible, one making the flood last one hundred and fifty and 
the other forty days (in the former Noah does not leave the 
ark for a year), show a combination of two stories. 

This is the tale told Gilgamesh by Utnapishtim. It oc- 
curs in different versions, the details of which have been 
explained by Professor Jastrow.^ Of late there has been 

. lAtrakhasis is also the name of the hero in an Akkadian tablet 
of c. 1800 B. c. The tale above locates the flood at Shuruppak 
(about half way between Nippur and Larsa). In Berosus, it oc- 
curs at Sippar. Berosus, the historiographer of Chaldea, h'ved at 
the end of the fourth century b. c. 
2 It is impossible here to give these details ; they will be found 



BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION 357 

an attempt made to combine the deluge-story with that of 
the first man and Paradise, under the caption of a Su- 
merian epic, but the interpretation appears to be too doubt- 
ful to be relied upon.^ 

The request made by Gilgamesh, that Enkidu reveal the 
mysteries of life hereafter, is only partly granted. A satis- 
factory description is withheld on the ground that it is too 
sad to tell; a mere glimpse of the gloomy underworld is 
allowed, when Enkidu tells Gilgamesh that Ereshkigal 
(Allatu) and Etana live there. Ereshkigal is the goddess 
of the subterranean cavern, from whom come diseases and 
evil. Those who die unburied have no rest but must roam 
about on earth eating offal; only brave warriors who are 
buried and have attention after death are moderately happy 
hereafter. At least they " lie on couches and drink pure 
water," and are at rest. Yet other accounts reveal that the 
underworld was a realm of decay and horror, a prison de- 
scribed as a " house from which no one comes forth who 
has entered it." The inhabitants feed on dust and live in 
darkness, being " clothed like birds in feathers." Such is 
the description in the account of Ishtar's descent to the 
underworld (the death of vegetation), when she searches 
for her beloved Tammuz. In this gloomy place rules Eresh- 
kigal, sometimes associated with Irkallu or Urugal, a per- 

in Barton's Archaeology and the Bible, Philadelphia, 1917, p. 277f., 
and in Jastrow's Hebrew and Babylonian Traditions, New York, 
1914, p. 321 f. In the view of Professor Jastrow, "the deluge myth 
rests on the annual decay and death of nature," perhaps magnified by 
the recollection of a particularly stormy season. Of the two Biblical 
versions, the Yahwist story stands nearer to the Babylonian legend 
than does that of the Priestly Code. The Hebrew tale introduces 
an ethical element not found in the Babylonian story. It differs 
from the latter also in making the deluge a prelude to the promise 
that the world, owing to the righteousness of Noah, shall not again 
be destroyed. 

1 This is based upon a cuneiform text found at Nippur. As first 
interpreted, by Dr. Langdon, the flood comes before the fall of 
man and the hero, named Tagtug, subsequently eats of the for- 
bidden food, cassia, and so forfeits immortal life. But Tagtug is 
no Noah, there is no flood, and cassia is not a forbidden fruit. 



35^ THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

sonification of the " wide place " itself. Sometimes, this 
Hades is a palace, with Ereshkigal and her husband Ner- 
gal ^ ruling there, but, however ruled, it is a place of mis- 
ery, hard to get into and harder to get out of. Evidently 
the Babylonians, like the Hebrews, believed that the dead 
live not much changed from the form in life, for in the 
Gilgamesh legend Enkidu is recognized at once; but the 
formal descriptions in the later descent of Ishtar are not 
in accordance with this older view. So, too, in Isaiah xiv. 
gi. and Ezekiel, xxxii. i8f,, virtually the Babylonian Aralu 
is described and the dead kings and warriors appear crowned 
and girded as in life. Brave warriors seem to live with 
more life-spirit hereafter, as they show more spirit when 
on earth — a notion often found among savages. But the 
common dead are weak and do nothing ; they talk but feebly 
and are unable to provide themselves with food. Those also 
who are neglected during their last moments live hereafter 
as they die here, sorrowful and neglected. When Ishtar 
descends, she finds the lower world encompassed by seven 
walls and storms her way through them; but even she 
has to submit to the removal of her crown, ear-rings, neck- 
lace, clothes, etc., till she stands at last naked before Eresh- 
kigal, who afflicts her with disease, while all fertiHty on 
earth ceases. Ishtar returns by order of Ea, after being 
sprinkled with the water of life. Certain gods called " re- 
storers to life " are recognized, apparently gods of solar 
origin who restore vegetation or perhaps raise from the 
dead. In any case the examples are few and for ordinary 
people there is no heaven or joy hereafter. Utnapishtim 
and his wife are translated, as a few Hebraic heroes are 
carried to heaven, but this pair do not go to heaven. They 
are carried to a sort of resting-place in earth. There is no 
paradise hereafter; when one dies one has no further con- 
cern even with the gods, who are the gods of the living. 

I The god of Cuthah ; hence " Cuthah " occurs also as a designa- 
tion of the underworld, being the home of Nergal (sun-), god of 
death. 



BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION 359 

Neither Babylonians nor Hebrews practised ancestor - 
worship. In Babylonia a few kings are deified and wor- 
shipped with sacrifice. But there is no general cult of the 
dead. Likewise among the Hebrews we find Enoch ^ and 
Elijah (perhaps Moses) translated to heaven, and vestiges 
of a practice of offering viands to ghosts; but the belief 
that the dead live hereafter and the practice of providing 
them with food, or even that of putting implements and 
toys into graves, are not indicative of ancestor-worship. 
As already explained (above, p. 277), the worship of dead 
kings does not imply a general worship of ancestors. 

Sheol, where none praises God (Ps. vi. 63), may be one 
with Babylonian shu'alu, " grave " ; it is described in Job 
as a place so gloomy that even its light is dark (Job x. 22), 
and the early belief of the Babylonians that the dead are all 
ekimmu demoniac shades, alive but weak shadows of hu- 
man beings,^ is reflected in Hebrew belief of the earlier 
period. Later, however, the Hebrew view changed and 
in the second century b. c, life hereafter was deemed a dou- 
ble condition, for " animals live below and men live on 
high," or in other words only the spirits of men, in dis- 
tinction from those of animals "go upward"; but the very 
passage that suggests this view questions it (Ecclesiastes 
iii. 21). The sixteenth and forty-ninth Psalms are more 
hopeful. Again, in Babylonian mythology there was no 
ethical factor, no suggestion that a man was punished or 
rewarded hereafter for acts done in this life, as in the later 
Hebraic belief. 

The Gilgamesh epic is a congeries of unrelated legends 
concerning the chief hero and others more or less closely 

1 On Enoch as Etana, see Barton, op. cit., p. 266. 

2 Shades are weak even when fed, but indignation makes them 
angry, and if neglected and unburied the ghosts may become evil 
demons on earth instead of resting underground. Fear of the dead 
is impHed by covering oneself in mourning and cuttings of hair 
may be made to give the shades power (which resides in the hair). 
Necromancy, oracles from the dead, implies a belief that souls could 
be made to answer, perhaps even dragged up from below, but not 
permanently. 



360 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

connected with him. Enkidu, for example, has no essential 
office in this story and probably is taken from another tale 
depicting how some first man, still savage and living with 
animals, is won from animalism by the love of a woman. 
It is too much to say that he represents Adam or that the 
woman who tempts him is a form of Eve, but there are 
points of similarity. Another figure of some interest is 
that of Etana, mentioned above as being in the under- 
world. He may be Enoch as well as Ethan (both words 
mean "strong"). His son's birth is attended by marvels. 
An eagle helps the child to be delivered and this eagle then 
tempts Etana to mount on his back into the sky, whereby 
the appearance of earth and sea below, as they ascend, is 
described. After they pass the gate of heaven (Anu), 
where they take a rest, they continue on their upward flight 
until the earth looks small as a garden bed, when suddenly 
they come crashing down and the next we hear of Etana 
he is in the underworld. The eagle is punished by the 
sun-god Shamash, who tells a serpent to creep into the car- 
cass of a dead ox and destroy the eagle, when the bird 
comes to eat it. In i Kings iv. 31, Ethan the Ezrahite is 
cited as a type of superior wisdom. 

Astrology has changed Ishtar into the planet Venus and 
as such her part in the Tammuz legend has been altered 
and it is as the planet that she is rescued from the under- 
world rather than as the mother-goddess. At an early 
period the greater gods were thus identified with planets,^ 
Marduk as Jupiter, Ninib as Saturn, Nergal as Mars, Nebo 
as Mercury. Astrology was especially favoured by the 
Assyrians and by the Chaldeans. The sun in an agricul- 
tural community naturally remained the chief god, Ninib 
in Nippur, Marduk of Eridu and Babylon, originally Anu 
of Erech. He is sometimes kind, sometimes destructive, but 
always the just and righteous god. Shamash punishes 

iThe lesser gods were identified with fixed stars. On the astral 
side of the reHgion and its exaggeration by Winckler and others, 
see King, History of Babylon, London, 1915, p. 292. 



BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION 3^1 

crimes, pronounces judgment through the priestly judges, 
etc. The moon-cult was more restricted, being associated 
chiefly with Ur in the South, a Sumerian settlement, and 
Haran in the North. The Moon is " lord of knowledge," 
or " luminary " ; ^ his horns appear in the headdress of 
Naram-Sin. He sails through heaven on a boat represented 
by the crescent. It is when Ishtar becomes Venus that she 
is made the daughter of the moon. 

To find out the will of the Babylonian gods, recourse 
was had to dreams and omens by a science of divination 
which was Babylonian (rather than Sumerian). One form 
of divination was based on the movements of the heavenly 
bodies. One was based on the interpretation of the liver 
of sacrificed animals, as the soul, which showed the soul 
or sense of the god. This latter idea rests on the early 
belief that the seat of emotion is the liver, as even in our day 
to be '' white-livered " means to be cowardly. Another 
method of divining was to shoot arrows or throw them down 
before an image of a god and get a response through the 
position they assumed. Sometimes they were previously 
marked. This was practised by the Arabs and may have 
been the origin of the incident (i Sam. xx. 2gi.) described 
as shooting arrows beside the stone Ezel, the fall of which 
indicated whether one should stay or go farther on. Im- 
ages or symbols of the divinity, such as were perhaps the 
Teraphim, were also consulted.^ 

Another point in which Babylonian culture touches that 
of the Hebrews is that of a taboo day. The Babylonian 

1 The moon was worshipped under this name at Ur, as Shamash 
was at Sippar. At Haran the moon is called Sin. Sin, Shamash, 
and Ishtar make an old triad of Babylon. 

2 In his Aspects of Religious Belief in Babylonia and Assyria, 
New York, 191 1, p. 145, Professor Jastrow shows that Babylonian 
hepatoscopy, examination of the liver, on the part of official in- 
spectors or seers, bdru, was carried to the Hittites and Etruscans, 
Other forms of divination employ oil and water, the bubbles mark- 
ing events, and the careful record of unnatural phenomena, celes- 
tial and terrestrial, such as unnatural births as well as storms and 
earthquakes, exactly as in China (above, p. 270). 



362 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

shabatum designated the full-moon's day, when the gods 
must be pacified, to interpret most naturally the equation 
of pacification and shabatum. In Hebrew the equivalent 
word designated a day of rest and refreshment, which grad- 
ually assumed a holy character. In a sense it was a holy 
(that is taboo) day to the Babylonians, as the pacification 
of the heart of the gods was essential at the (evil) critical 
** full-moon " period, to guard against ill-luck, incident on 
the declination of lunar power. It is a good example of 
the way the accursed and the holy unite. 

The Hebrew Sabbath is often spoken of in connection 
with the new-moon as a parallel lunar phase. Celebrations 
at the middle of the month may revert to the original idea 
of the Sabbath.^ But especially noteworthy is the fact 
that in Babylon, on the " evil seventh day," the king might 
not use food cooked over a fire nor ride forth, just as 
the Hebrew is forbidden to light a fire or go forth on the 
Sabbath (Ex. xvi. 29; xxxv. 3). This shows that the 
Sabbath, too, was originally an unlucky day. The multi- 
plication of Sabbaths is also not without a Babylonian paral- 
lel, as special sacrifices were held on the 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th, 
of the (lunar) month and the 7th and 15th were very un- 
lucky.2 Probably the very natural division began as a.ne- 
fas day, which would give it a rest-character. Character- 
istic of the two Semitic branches is it that the Babylonian 
regarded it as evil while the Hebrew hallowed it. But it 
must be remembered that the Hebrew made little of 
Sabbaths till after the Exile. Even as late as 800 b. c. the 
Hebrew Sabbath was not what it became later, for exam- 
ple in Is. Iviii. I3f. 

1 Purim is thus celebrated in the middle of the month, though this 
is a Persian spring festival adopted by the Jews, in which Mordecai 
and Esther represent an original Marduk and Ishtar, perhaps an- 
other " king-killing " reminiscence. 

2 This division of the month by moon-phases with sacred days at 
the moon's halves and quarters is also Hindu; every "knot" day 
being a taboo day, though usually only the new and full moon days 
were observed as holy-days. Compare 2 Kg. iv. 23 for the grouping 
of the two days. 



BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION 363 

The most noteworthy Babylonian festivals were those 
of the New Year, Zagmug, and the Tammuz festivals, when 
Ishtar was wedded to her Lord at the vernal equinox and 
mourned over him at his death. There was a Marduk fes- 
tival, when a procession went across from Babylon to Bor- 
sippa, amid general rejoicing.^ But penitential psalms also 
accompanied this spring celebration (of ten days). As the 
Jewish Day of Atonement marks the opening of the year, 
when one's fate is inscribed for the year, so at the Baby- 
lonian New Year. The tone of the psalms is at its best in 
such an extract as this : " The sin that I sinned I know 
not; my god has visited me in anger. I sought help but 
none took my hand; I wept but none stood by my side. I 
cried aloud and there was none that heard. To my god, 
the merciful god, to the god I know not, I turn and pray. 
How long, O Lord! O Lord, cast not thy servant away; 
but turn my sin into a blessing; and may the wind carry 
away my transgressions; seven times seven are they; for- 
give thou them ! " 

The Babylonian hymns or psalms are for the most part 
more magical than religious; yet even as incantations or 
purificatory formulae they are not without an ethical ele- 
ment. Purificatory rites are apt to pass from physical to 
spiritual; taboo may be said to be the beginning of the 
ethos, but even taboo connotes a spiritual defilement and 
purification. So the Babylonian sounds a note leading to 
the expression of inner purification when he says : " I 
have washed my hands with pure water . . . (washed ofiP) 
all that is evil in my body." There are also, as Professor 
Langdon has pointed out, certain congregational hymns of 
lamentation, which may be older than the private psalm, 
and which we may perhaps regard as models for Jewish 
lamentations learned on the spot. They appear to be very 

1 This was originally a solar festival, like that of Shamash at 
Sippar, in which the king represents the god. Nergal had a winter 
solstice ceremony of monrning. The Babylonian festivals were thus 
partly lunar and partly solar or agricultural. 



364 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

old. In Assyria the ethical element is clearly connected 
with divinity, more especially with Shamash, as the Sun 
who is '* judge " and whose daughters are Justice and Right. 
It is before this judge that the Babylonian king Hammurabi 
stands, and Shamash grows ever more a supporter of 
morality, as he is the all-seeing god of divination. 

Closer connection with the West is found in the hymns 
of lament over Tammuz (Sumerian Dumu-zi), the early 
dying vegetation mourned by the mother of all life, or, as 
some interpret him, the spring sun, who is wept by the 
women (Ezekiel viii. 14). This is the Adonis pictured by 
Theocritus ; in Babylon his sister was the " lady-of-the- 
field," and she and his mother (sometimes one) weep for 
him when the summer solstice brings an end to his life and 
he " goes to earth's bosom," where Ishtar later seeks him. 
His classical name is usually derived from Adon, " lord," 
though he is not a very lordly figure and is more the deliciae 
than the master of Ishtar or Venus. Hence it has been 
suggested that his name means " joy " (connected with 
rjhovTj). In Babylon, Tammuz is sometimes a goddess.^ 

The Babylonian and Assyrian form of religion, as has 
been said, is intensely practical, but with a slight tendency 
to ethical monotheism. This among the Hebrews resulted 
in real monotheism, which was revived again by the Mo- 
hammedans. The developed cult of these great sister na- 
tions of Mesopotamia cannot, however, give us the prim- 
itive Semitic form, already buried by syncretism and the 
mingling of two kinds of culture. In Arabia, we find a 
Semitic tribal society, not of a state but of a small com- 
munity, and, since religion reflects social conditions, a 
tribal or clan religion. Every individual in the clan must 
worship the deity. There is no religious liberality in a 
small primitive community. Before Babylon also the rule 

1 Compare Kretschmer, Glotta, 1915, vii, p. 2Qf. The original 
story may have been Sumerian. Elsewhere the god is lamented by 
a husband-brother (so in the Osiris-Isis myth), while Tammuz is 
bewailed by a sister-mother. 



BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION 3^5 

was that every city had its god. But Babylon had many 
gods from many tribes and towns. In a small tribe the 
state and religion are one; the god himself is a member of 
the tribe. As such he is the head or lord of the town, 
as it represents a tribe, and often has no other name than 
master, lord, or king, Baal, Melech, El ("mighty one"). 
In Arabia, the primitive matriarchal or mother-headship 
form of government was still reflected in the female char- 
acter of the divinities, many tribes worshipping an Allat 
(lady) instead of a lord.^ But there were also in each re- 
ligion countless spirits revered or feared as local powers, 
corresponding to the Jinns of today, while stones and trees 
were looked upon as in themselves divine and worshipped 
by the tribe. Here a striking contrast presents itself with 
the Aryans, whose earliest religion is a family religion not 
a tribal one. It follows that not the hearth, as among the 
Aryans, but the land is the centre of holiness. Hence too, 
as we have seen, the worship of ancestors plays no part 
in Semitic religions, whereas it is a prominent factor in 
Aryan religion. The nucleus round which the whole is 
rolled is different. Without the family cult there is no 
worship of ancestors, no raising of ancestors to become 
great gods ; but the land is the centre, the spirit of the place 
(the local nature-spirit) is the spirit of the clan. All are 
related not only to him but through him to each other. 
On the other hand, the clan-ancestor remains a hero, but is 
not a worshipped god.^ Hence the mighty tribal bond of 
clan-kinship ; hence, too, the ethical teaching that blood- 
brotherhood was a sacred tie ^ and that tribal hospitality 
was a sacred duty; hence too, most important from the 

1 So (obscured) in Babylonian mythology, the goddess Aruru 
and the goddess Ereshkigal were respectively the prior creators and 
rulers of the great underworld. 

2 So in Babylon there is no family ancestor-worship but king 
Gilgamesh becomes a national hero. This might have developed 
into general "ancestor-worship" but it did not do so. Only kings 
received divine honours (see above). 

3 In mourning this blood-covenant is implied by cutting oneself. 



366 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

religious point of view, the doctrine, not formally taught 
but inevitably assumed, that the sacrificial meal was not, 
as later, an offering of thanks to a god but a communion 
of the clan with the god of the clan. In Babylon the food 
of the gods is thus eaten by the people. Most of the 
Arabian tribes locate their god in a stone or tree-trunk, 
and the stone becomes the altar because it was at first 
divine, as the god. The Ashera or sacred groves of Scrip- 
ture embody the belief in a goddess of vegetation parallel 
to the figure of Ishtar. As with her cult, so with that of 
the Ashera, which was apt to be a drastic and literal aid 
to the spirit of fertility. It was not necessarily a female 
figure that was thus revered.^ The masculine Athtar is 
found in South Arabia, where the female principle has 
become male ; but in general the greatest divinity of the 
Western Semites was the Magna Mater, as she was known 
in Rome, who became for a time a world-divinity sacred 
from the Euphrates to the Guadelquiver. In Canaan the 
worship was like that in the towns ruled by Ishtar in the 
Gilgamesh story. The goddess of fertility is served by 
women slaves of the temple, whose ministrations appear as 
a debauch of sensuality. In small places there was prob- 
ably only the annual celebration of the spring- festival, but 
the tov/ns intensified the religious evil and it became a 
scandal to the decent Westerners, whose own cult of sim- 
ilar powers was more veiled, that the gods of the East 
were mere profligates ^ and their service mere occasion for 
gross excess. 

Unmistakable affinity with Hebraic legends is shown by 
those of Babylon, with which Palestine stood in some sort 

1 Neither in the Ashera nor in the Ishtar cult is there any trace 
of ethical dualism. The only dualism in Babylonia is the natural 
opposition of sun and storm. Sun and vegetation cannot be re- 
garded as more than sex-dualism in nature. 

2 The sacred prostitutes, however, were not the only women 
servitors of the gods. Some, like the entu, magicians and diviners, 
were apparently chaste priestesses. Nabonidus appointed his daugh- 
ter as chief of such a company of diviners. 



BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION 3^7 

of connexion at an early period. A Jacob lived in Bab- 
ylon c. 1900 B. c. and a Jacob-town was known in Palestine 
c. 1600 B. c. Abraham also is a West Semitic (Aramaic) 
name known in Babylon at about the time of Hammurabi. 
But all this does not prove that Palestine was colonized 
from Babylon. It merely indicates that a Western Semite 
named Jacob and one named Abraham were with the large 
number of Amorites who took their way to Babylonia at 
the time of Hammurabi. It is at this point that we get a 
reasonable explanation of the resemblances between East 
and West from the point of view of legends and stories of 
the past. They had a common origin, not in Arabia sev- 
eral millennia before 2000 b. c, but to the west of the 
Euphrates, in the area where the Semites lived before they 
became respectively Babylonians and Palestinians. The He- 
brews took with them two different versions of the Crea- 
tion story and perhaps two of the Deluge ; the other Semites 
knew still more. These other Semites preferred quantity; 
the Hebrews preferred quality ; and even what they had they 
refined, just as they refined later the tales of other Patri- 
archs. 

On the ethical side, the discovery at Susa in 1901-1902 
of the code of Hammurabi and the subsequent discovery 
that this code reverts to a Sumerian model of circa 2500 
B. c.^ show that this king, who was paramount ruler c. 2000 
B. c. as far as the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean, gov- 
erned a city-population far more complex than that of the 
Hebrews of the Mosaic code, though his laws retain marks 
of the old barbarities preserved in the Pentateuch (ordeal, 
lex talionis). When this code was made, it was intended 
for a commercial population and probably was not used 
at all in the western dominion. At the time of the Exile 

1 Compare Clay, A Sumerian Prototype of the Hammurabi Code, 
Yale Oriental Series, i, p. i8f . The tablet, in the Yale Collection, 
bases the law upon the authority of the goddess Nisaba and the 
god Khani, patrons of writing and law. Hammurabi's code appears 
under the auspices of the sun-god Shamash; the earlier code, under 
Western divinities. 



368 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

it was probably no longer in use, or the Jews would have 
improved their own code by copying it. As it is, although 
there are a few instances of correspondence between the 
codes (not so many as has been asserted), the dissimilarities 
and divergencies are much greater. And for a very good 
reason. The Hammurabi code is made for a more ad- 
vanced type of civilization. Hebraic law does not even 
recognize the complex business life implied by the Hammu- 
rabi code. Thus, in contrast to the Pentateuch, Hammu- 
rabi regulates wages and prices, liabilities of agents, of 
builders, and of physicians. He has rules for adopting sons, 
for the treatment of the temple- women, a more complicated 
law of inheritance, a more civilized divorce-law. He per- 
mits imprisonment, instead of slavery, for debt and regu- 
lates usury, while the Hebrews took another two thousand 
years even to legalize interest on loans. Besides this, the 
Hammurabi code has nothing to do with ritual and reli- 
gion, the main concern of the Mosaic code. In a word, 
the Hammurabi code is purely a civil code, while the He- 
braic code is only incidentally a civil code, containing regu- 
lations for a much simpler agricultural community. In 
character, therefore, the Mosaic code is really more prim- 
itive than that of Hammurabi. The few common factors 
might easily have derived from a common stock of Semitic 
law, developed in each case according to national needs. 

So much has been said or implied above as to the su- 
periority of the Hebrews ethically (they deserve the praise), 
that an impression may have been given impugning by con- 
trast the Babylonians and Assyrians. As for the Baby- 
lonians, the code just discussed shows a mild and humane 
monarch and the ethical character of the penitential psalms 
is high. From the palace of Ashurbanipal come also textc 
inculcating ethics as a religious concern : " Thou shalt not 
slander; speak what is pure; speak no evil; speak kindly. 
Shamash will punish him who speaks evil and .slanders. 
Let not thy mouth boast; when angry, speak not at once. 



BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION 3^9 

lest thou repent afterwards that thou has spoken in anger. 
Approach thy god daily with an offering and prayer; and 
come before him with a pure heart." Again, in the same 
text, it is said that one should not oppress the weak but 
should give food and wine to the needy; one should seek 
right and avoid wrong, " for this is pleasing to the god," 
and " he who fears the gods will live long." 

It must not be imagined, however, that " from the pal- 
ace of Ashurbanipal " necessarily implies Assyrian origin 
or great antiquity. Ashurbanipal scoured the country for 
interesting texts and made a museum of them; those in 
foreign tongues his many learned scribes could do into 
Assyrian for him. What we actually know of these texts 
is that they are from about 700 b. c. and come from no one 
knows where. Now it is a striking fact that, although there 
are Babylonian flood-stories as old as 2000 b. c, yet the 
Creation and Deluge legends which most closely resemble 
those of the Hebrews come from this vague source and 
date, so that for all we know to the contrary the Biblical 
stories may actually have been composed before the crea- 
tion and flood stories of the *' Nimrod epic," as it has been 
called, though it is not an epic and has no connexion with 
Nimrod. Yet it would be too much to say that the Ashur- 
banipal jumble of legends comes from Palestine. Prob- 
ably Amorites and Aramaeans lived originally to the West 
of the Euphrates, later spreading in two directions and 
each taking a store of legend and a few simple rules of 
conduct like " an eye for an eye." It was from this west- 
ern land that Hammurabi, himself an Amorite, as were 
largely the Hebrews, derived, and since in his " First Ba- 
bylonian Dynasty " five kings had already preceded him, it 
is probable that the eastward stream of Western Semites 
had begun their course as early as the middle of the third 
millennium b. c, or even earlier. 



370 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

L. W. King, A History of Babylon, London, 1915. 

Morris Jastrow, Jr., Die Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens, 
Giessen, Leipzig, 1905-12; Hebrew and Babylonian Tra- 
dition, New York, 1914; Aspects of Religious Belief and 
Practice in Babylonia and Assyria, New York, 191 1; Civ- 
ilisation of Babylonia and Assyria, Philadelphia, 191 5. 

R. W. Rogers, The History of Babylonia and Assyria, 2 vols., 
New York, 1915. 

George A. Barton, A Sketch of Semitic Origins, New York, 
1902; Archaeology and the Bible, Philadelphia, 2nd ed., 
1917. 

A. T. Clay, Amurru, The Home of the Northern Semites, Phil- 
adelphia, 1909. 

Lewis R. Farnell, Greece and Babylon, Edinburgh, 191 1. 



CHAPTER NINETEEN 

THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 

Zoroaster is the first of those few religious teachers who 
have so altered received religion as to seem to be the find- 
ers as well as the founders of the religions afterwards 
called by their name. Yet, like all the others, he built his 
religion upon a foundation which had existed from im- 
memorial antiquity and which persisted long after the edi- 
fice raised over it began to crumble. 

When and where Zoroaster was born is not known. One 
theory, supported by excellent authority, is that he was 
born not far from Urumiah, near the Caspian Sea, in Me- 
dian territory, where, according to native tradition, his 
father, Purushaspa, lived, though his mother, Dughdhova, 
is supposed to have come from Ragha (Rai), near Tabriz. 
This district (Teheran) became the seat of the later faith 
and it was generally believed that Airyana Vaeja (Iran Vaj ) , 
that is, Atropatene or Azerbaijan, between Lake Urumiah 
and the Caspian Sea, was where the prophet was tempted 
by the Evil One. The literary data, however, point rather 
to Bactria than to Media as, if not the birth-place, at least 
the life-place of the prophet. It is this region that the 
geographical statements in the Vendidad appear to indi- 
cate and the language of the early Gathas, the only literary 
remains imputable to Zoroaster himself, is so closely re- 
lated to that of the Rig Veda as to seem like an Indie dia- 
lect. 

We have already seen how close was the connexion be- 
tween the Vedic and Zoroastrian religions. The speakers 
of the two dialects must have lived near each other in 
place and in time; the worshippers must have had a com- 

371 



372 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

mon creed in many respects. The priests of both religions 
bear the same name; the chief object of worship is the 
same great Spirit; even the lesser spirits (gods) bear in 
part identical names ; both religions hold the Soma or Hom 
plant in veneration; and in lesser details of the cult there 
is often a verbal similarity. The religion of Zoroaster, the 
Greek form of Zarathustra, was obviously built over a 
prior religion closely agreeing with that of the Vedic poets. 
But the deva or bright god of the Veda is the daeva or evil 
spirits of the Zoroastrian; the c?a^yM-slaying Indra of the 
Veda is one of these evil spirits, and the pagan dasyu he 
slays in the Veda is the good people or district of the Zo- 
roastrian (danhu, a settlement of the orthodox), as the 
" demon nations '* of the Chinese were their neighbours 
on the north. We may imagine then that, as the two peo- 
ples, originally contiguous, drifted apart, the distinction, 
still visible in the Rig Veda, between the cult of the Wise 
Spirit of the Holy Order and the cult of the lower nature 
gods such as Indra, was accentuated, especially as the cult 
of the Holy Order and the more spiritual religion became 
the cult opposed to the nomadic hordes, whose lawless deeds 
were themselves a reproach to the gods they worshipped, 
as it is said, " Ye (nomads) cause men doing the worst 
things to be called 'beloved of the daevas'" (Yasna 32). 
The mere fact that the word for god became the word for 
demon is not significant, since in India itself the word for 
evil demon, originally meaning spirit, was at first applied 
to a good god (Asura). The difference between one side 
of the Vedic religion and Zoroastrianism is only partial. 
Vedic hymns to the chief Asura are quite Zoroastrian in 
tone and show that the Wise Spirit (Asura) had a cult in 
India as well as in Bactria or Parthia, where Zoroastrianism 
probably arose. 

The date of Zoroaster can be neither that assigned to him 
by Greek tradition (c. 6000 B.C.) nor by native tradition 
and modern scholarship (c. 600 B.C.). Many scholars be- 
lieve that Zoroaster was born in 625 or 660 b. c, that in any 



RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 373 

event he belongs to the latter half of the seventh century. 
Others hold that he was born about looo b. c. This at least 
accords better with the linguistic closeness between Vedic 
and Avestan early texts. 

The oldest Vedic texts may date from c. 120Q-1000 b. c. 
When one thinks of the linguistic changes likely to have 
taken place in an unlettered community in the course of a 
few centuries, the date 660 for the Gathas seems quite im- 
possible. Probably Zoroaster lived centuries before the 
time to which he is usually ascribed. The current theory, 
based on tradition regarding his life, considers him 
a prophet patronized by a certain Hystaspes (Vishtaspa, 
Gushtasp), the son of Lohrasp, king of Balkh, the scene 
of his activity being in Seistan. It is believed by the faith- 
ful that Lake Hamun in this district, just west of Afghan- 
istan, still preserves his seed. Probably his sect was at 
first a small and insignificant religious body. All the Per- 
sians worshipped the Wise Spirit (Ormuzd), who is the 
chief figure in Zoroastrianism ; but this does not imply that 
he was first worshipped in the Zoroastrian faith. Some 
Medes were Mazdakas. The early Achaemenian kings do 
not seem to know the prophet's name and Cyrus worshipped 
any god (for example, Bel), just as the Assyrian king 
Ashurbanipal recognized Ormuzd. A king worshipped any 
god likely to.be useful, politically or otherwise. Even Da- 
rius, a Mazdaean who is thought by some scholars to have 
been a real Zoroastrian, admits the existence of other gods 
besides Ormuzd, as no real Zoroastrian would have done, 
though to him Ormuzd is the "great god who made earth 
and heaven and made Darius the one king over many." ^ 

Further legends regarding the prophet relate that Vish- 
taspa was converted to Zoroaster's belief when the latter 
was forty-two years old, after Zoroaster had been preach- 
ing for a dozen years without effect save that he converted 

1 Darius shows no acquaintance with the figure of Ahriman or 
with those of the archangels; but the argument from silence here 
has little weight. 



374 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

his own cousin after ten years of instruction. This king 
had two councillors, brothers, who supported Zoroaster as 
they supported the king, and with their help Zoroaster (or 
Vishtaspa) soon converted by force, in religious warfare, 
the whole kingdom. At the age of seventy-seven the aged 
warrior-prophet was killed in one of these religious wars, 
while fighting against Turan, says tradition.^ Not much 
besides this is related of the prophet's personal affairs. As 
a court-favourite he married a daughter of one of these 
councillors, Frashaoshtra, and his daughter Pourucishta mar- 
ried the other brother, Jamaspa, traditional author of the 
Vendidad, really a late priestly work. Tradition gives his 
lineage and tells of three wives and several children. Like 
the detailed account of the religious wars and conversions 
of foreigners in India and Greece, these tales may be fictions 
of succeeding generations. 

But what emerges as important from the mass of tradi- 
tion is the fact that we really have a double life of Zoroaster, 
one the life revealed in his own words and the earliest texts, 
another that invented by religious credulity. According to 
the first, Zoroaster was a man of good birth, lofty aims, and 
pure nature, but in no wise a supernatural being ; according 
to the second, he was a glorified and supernatural man, 
whose conception was immaculate, whose mother was di- 
vinely ordained for her holy office ; at whose birth all crea- 
tion laughed with joy ^ and evil demons fled aghast ; who, 
when grown, was conducted by an archangel into the pres- 
ence of God, and in glory unutterable received divine reve- 
lation ; who, finally, after seven visions and after once being 
tempted by the Evil One, died fighting for the true faith and 

1 Zoroaster, like Buddha, was an aristocrat by birth, belonging 
to the noble family of Spitama. Like Buddha also he (at twenty) 
abandoned his family to study religion. He studied for ten years, 
began to preach at thirty, and made one convert by the time he was . 
forty. His first vision or revelation came to him at the age of 
thirty. Vishtaspa converted thousands by slaying the unconvertable ! 

2 Zoroaster himself "smiled when born." His spirit (soul) was 
kept in the Horn till God's glory had purified his mother's body. 



RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 375 

yet is not extinct; for in the fulness of time shall be born of 
his seed, miraculously preserved in the Seistan lake, another 
even greater than he, the Saoshyant or saviour, who shall 
bring salvation and everlasting bliss to the pious, and utterly 
destroy those that have opposed without cessation the com- 
ing of the mJllennium. This view is quite different from 
that of the Prophet himself who, as a mere man, wanders 
disconsolate and cries : 

To what land shall I turn, whither shall I go? 
I am separated from relatives and from friends ; ^ 
The people and the rulers of the land, they treat me ill. 
Unto thee I lament, O Wise Spirit, give help unto me. 

Zoroastrian literature, which goes under the general name 
of Avesta, perhaps "tradition" (Zend A vesta, meaning 
" Commentary and Avesta "), consists of the Yasna, Yashts, ^ 
and the Vendidad, with some supplementary works. Old- 
est and most important, the liturgical Yasna comprise songs, 
Gathas, some of which may have been composed by Zoro- 
aster himself, supplemented by minor litanies called Vis- 
pered, " all lords." The Yashts, twenty-one hymns to an- 
cient divinities and heroes, are in part old, so that they are 
usually placed, together with the Haptanghaiti, an early 
prose work, next to the Gathas ; but some Yashts are quite 
late, probably later than the Vendidad, another prose work 
perhaps meaning " against demons." Besides these, there 
are minor prayers and fragments (Khorda, little, Avesta), 
and this whole material is supplemented by late Pahlavi 
texts (such as the Bundahish and the Dinkard), which con- 
tain much valuable traditional matter, though they are them- 
selves as late or later than the Christian era. Except for the 
Gathas, of unknown antiquity, the literature included under 
the headings Yasna, Yashts and Vendidad may date from 
the fifth to the third century b. c, though its present form is 

^The exact meaning is doubtful but seems to show that he was 
a wanderer and the fact that he became known first as a Median 
Magupat (leader of the Magi, Mobed) does not militate against, 
but rather supports, the view that he was not a Median by birth. 



376 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

in the edition of the third century a. d. In the centuries 
preceding the Christian era there was a rapid decadence of 
faith and there was no early redaction of the holy books. 
Alexander destroyed one of the " golden " copies at Samark- 
and and Persepolis and the other was lost. Hence, it is said, 
we possess only fragments of the original scriptures. But 
the old texts were collected in the first century a. d., and the 
first Sassanian king, Ardashir (226-240 a. d.), had them re- 
edited under Tansar, a priestly scholar who was anxious to 
purify the scriptures, so that he would not have introduced 
foreign ideas into them. The dialect of the Gathas is very 
like that of the Vedas, so that these hymns could not have 
been forged, and they contain the gist of Zoroastrian be- 
lief. Additions were made to the text under Shapur I (240- 
271 A. D.), perhaps as late as Shapur II (310-379), and the 
Pahlavi texts did not attain their present form till the sixth 
century a. d. ; but we are not dependent on these later texts 
for our understanding of the early religion. With such 
additions as all scriptures have, we may confi.dently believe 
that the main outlines of Zoroaster's religion as we know it 
have been preserved since the time of the Achaemenides 
(559-230 B.c.).^ 

Zoroaster himself says that what he did was to purify the 
old faith. That is, he did not create a religion but improved 
it. He constructed his religion upon one that already recog- 
nized a Wise Spirit and a Holy Order (of the universe), as 
well as the cult of sun, moon, certain stars, earth, fire, water, 

1 Darmesteter's theory, brilliantly expounded, that the body of the 
literature dates frcrm the period of the Sassanides (226-651 a, c), is 
now thoroughly discredited. He believed that the Logos theios 
of Philo Judaeus is reflected in the Good Mind, and in the ideal 
Fravashi he saw Plato's idea. But the Good Mind is far older 
than Philo and the Avesta knows nothing of ideas of abstract quali- 
ties or inorganic substances. All was in confusion in Persia from 
the death of Alexander to the end of the Parthian period of the 
Arsacides (250 B.C. to 226 a. d.), but the cult of archangels was 
known much earHer. By 400 b. c. their names appear in the Cappa- 
docian calendar. Artaxerxes was a Zoroastrian (465-425 b. c.) and 
the Amesha Spentas are at least pre-Alexandrian (Theopompus or 
Hermippus of Smyrna is authority for Plutarch, his and Osiris). 



RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 377 

and the Manes. Even in his new form of religion was still 
preserved the reverence for the sacred moon-plant, which 
he personally abhorred; he inherited also a stock of Vedic 
legends regarding the Dragon-slayer, the conflict between the 
powers helpful to man and those injurious to man. But into 
these elementary religious notions Zoroaster introduced a 
new idea. In rehgious belief prior to Zoroaster, each indi- 
vidual spiritual power was good or bad only as it helped 
or injured man. Zoroaster estabHshed a criterion other than 
usefulness, to determine whether a power was good or bad, 
by making an ethical distinction between the spirits. The 
" Eternal Order," under whose sway stood even the gods, 
was not enough ; the Order, he insisted, was not only eternal 
but it was moral ; and the great Spirit was not only eternal 
and wise but was also moral. Zoroaster himself practically 
recognizes this one spirit as God, ignoring other gods. But 
as these could not be ignored forever, since they were firmly 
established among the people, all the world was soon divided 
into friends and foes of this Order and Spirit, as good or 
evil. All the old gods who could represent moral elevation 
were thus grouped as servitors of the ethical ideal incorpor- 
ated in the form of the great Wise Spirit ; those incapable of 
being ranged thus were set off as enemies of the Holy Order 
and Wise Spirit. In other words, many of the Vedic divin- 
ities in this way became demons and devils, while some re- 
mained on the side of good. Over the universe then rose the 
figure of the Wise Spirit himself, Ahura Mazda (Ormuzd), 
who was in pre-Zoroastrian days the one pre-eminently 
ethical figure of the old pantheon.^ Yet the Indie figure, 
though ethical, was not consistently moral. He ensnared 
as well as helped man; he was sometimes demoniac as well 
as divine ; he was also a close associate of immoral powers. 
Moreover, the Indie pantheon as a whole had no ethical 

1 With the word mazda, " greatly wise" compare what is said of 
the Asura called Varuna (Heaven Spirit) in the Rig Veda: 
" Greatly wise was the nature of him who established heaven and 
earth," etc., where dhird mahind {janunshi) translates, as it were, 
Mazda. Mazdah Ahura is the old form or Mazda (h) alone. 



378 • THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

standing, and even its highest representative was not freed 
from his nature-form ; he was still the material Heaven-god. 
But the Wise Spirit of Zoroastrianism is no form of nature, 
neither sky, nor moon, nor sun, but spirit only and withal 
the spirit of truth, purity, and justice. The great advance 
therefore made by Zoroaster may be expressed in two 
words by saying that he made religion ethical and spiritual. 
God is a spirit, not a nature-god ; and God is good.^ 

Although the old gods persisted and were still divine, as 
far as they could be retained, yet before the august form of 
Ormuzd they shrank of themselves and served merely to 
throw his greatness into stronger relief. And like him were 
the attributes of Ormuzd, personified as spiritual powers of 
God. Yet, as thus personified, they appear as real persons 
and are regarded as archangels of God. Opposed to these 
stood the evil powers of the universe, and in course of time 
they too were grouped as a host headed by one supreme Evil 
Spirit, around whom stood, battling for evil, spirits really 
older than he, all the immoral forces of the world as they 
were now conceived, many of them the degraded Devas of 
the ancient order. Many, however, were but the personified 
ills that flesh is heir to ; for primitive thought first thinks of 
ill as itself evil: hunger, drought, disease are not sent by 
demons but are themselves demons. Famine is a demon 
driven away by grain, because on grain being eaten Famine 
dies of inanition. The army of the Evil One thus consisted 
partly of independent demons and partly of personified 
qualities of himself, in exact counterpart to the army of the 
Lord. At first this horde is rather indeterminate ; the demon 
of rapine, Fury, leads them, under the Worst Mind (Evil 
Mind), whose second self or representative is the Lie- 
demon. This is clearly a mental antithesis to the Good 
Spirit, the natural dualism of every primitive man, who 
recognizes primarily a good synonymous with the pleasant 
and an evil synonymous with the unpleasant, but elevated to 

1 Only in late texts is Ormuzd represented as wearing a tiara and 
ring and carrying a sceptre; in some, as sun-god, he even has wings. 



RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 379 

the plane of the moral. Zoroaster's flock was a much abused 
and outraged congregation and his wrath is divided between 
hatred of his opponents as unbelievers and fear of them as 
oppressors. One of our eminent Avestan scholars has said 
that the most striking feature of Zoroaster's faith, as taught 
in the Gathas, is dualism ; but it is more than this. Dualism 
of a sort is as primitive as savagery ; the striking feature in 
Zoroaster's faith is the appHcation of an ethical dualism with 
logical insistence to every aspect of existence and the thor- 
ough co-ordination of physical and spiritual elements into a 
homogeneous ethical conception of life. Again, from the 
religious point of view, there is in Zoroastrianism no attempt 
to conciliate or propitiate evil spirits, with whom the ortho- 
dox believer has no dealings ; he fights against them without 
remission. 

The Evil One is of course personified, as all his 99,999 
diseases are devils ; but it is a question how far the personi- 
fication went at first. In India, Fury, Fear, and Disease are 
'* children " of Shiva, and so Fury is a child of the Evil 
Mind, while Good Mind and Piety are, respectively, son 
and daughter of the Wise Spirit; Righteousness is even his 
" son by generation." But all this is poetic or prophetic 
imagery in great part. Even the renowned description of 
Ormuzd and Ahriman in the Gathas is not necessarily more 
than this : " Two primal things [principles, neuter] , a bet- 
ter thing and a worse thing, in thought, word, and deed — 
come together as twins, yet separate and independent, to 
make life and death (not-life), to determine how the world 
at last shall be, for the wicked the worst life, for the holy 
the best mental state." ^ Of these, evil chose the worst ; 

^ This is Zoroaster's own definition of " Heaven," vahishtem 
mano, the best mind. The personified "better thing" appears at 
once as Spenishta Mainyu, the most holy mind. The two spirits 
are described (Yasna 45) as agreeing in naught, "neither (says the 
Good to the Evil One) do our minds, our teachings, nor our con- 
cepts, nor our behefs, nor our words, nor our deeds, nor yet our 
consciences nor souls agree in aught." There is no reason to sup- 
pose (with some scholars) that in the above description the Holiest 
Mind is not one with the Wise Spirit. 



380 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

but the most holy mind, clothed with heaven, chose right- 
eousness. The (neutral) Daevas could not determine which 
side to choose; but at last the Worst Mind was chosen by 
them and they rushed forth with Fury, as demon, to cor- 
rupt human lives. Piety, guardian of earth, approached; 
with her came Power, Good Mind and Right Order, and 
Piety gave a body to the souls of men not yet incorporate. 
When at last vengeance shall come upon these wretched sin- 
Vners, then, says Zoroaster to his Lord, Ormuzd, '' then 
thy kingdom (Power) shall come through (thy) Good 
Mind (working in men), since the Good Mind (probable 
subject) issues commands to those who shall deliver the 
Lie-demon into the two hands of Righteousness (Right 
Order), and may we be of those who effect this, the great 
renewal, and make the world go on (to perfection) ; yea, 
may we be as the Wise Spirits (plural of Ahura Mazda!), 
even as Righteousness (the wise spirit) and the other wise 
spirits. Then shall the blow of destruction fall on the Lie- 
demon, but in the happy abode of Good Thought and of 
Ahura Mazda the righteous saints shall gather." 

Here, in this exiguous " system,'* the conception of the 
evil mind and good mind is that of personified principles. 
The good mind is in man as well as in Ormuzd; all his 
attributes, not yet grouped as personified archangels, are, 
like himself, Ahura Mazdas. God is thus addressed by 
Zoroaster as a plural or as singular (the plural, Ahura Maz- 
das, appears again in Gatha, 31, 4). The Evil Mind is 
also inherent in all its creations, as it enters into the per- 
verted demons, who at first were neither good nor bad but 
simply spirits. Zoroaster raises no question as to the com- 
parative power of the Good and Evil Minds; he assumes 
throughout that the former will finally overcome, with the 
help of the good mind in man, all the hosts of evil. In 
^J other words, Zoroaster is a monotheist of the strictest type. 
He does not analyse, he is no metaphysician, no theologian ; 
he is a prophet ; he teaches dogmatically and denounces solely 
the "seed of evil" (the Daevas). He feels himself God's 



RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 3^1 

chosen scourge to be a terror to infidels. " When (he says 
to Ormuzd) thy angel Faith came to me and said, Who art 
thou? then, I, Zoroaster, said to her, (I am) he that tor- 
ments the sinners and avenges the righteous and I would 
devote myself (so long as I may praise thee and sing my 
song) to thee and to the preparation for thy kingdom and 
the laudation of the holy Fire. . . . They said that I bring 
only woe; but that will I do which thou has said to be 
best." Again he asks, praising God : " Who is the father 
of the Right Order? Who gave to sun and stars their 
path, — who save thee ? Who holds the earth below and the 
clouds above, that they fall not? Who made the water and 
the plants . . . and who inspires our thoughts ? This I ask, 
do thou tell me aright, O Spirit, who, as a skilful artisan, 
madest the light and the darkness . . . who madest the 
dawns and the noon and midnight . . . and tell me how I 
shall purify the faith of my people. All other (gods) save 
thee I look upon with hate. How may I banish the Lie- 
demon, thou father of the good mind, thou whose daughter 
is Piety ? . . . Now come the Karpans and Kavis to slay us, 
they whose own souls and consciences will cry out upon 
them when they approach the Bridge of Separation; but in 
the abode of the Lie for ever shall be their habitation. . . . 
Yet if among the Turanians there arise those who help the 
settlements of Piety (who guards earth), even with them 
shall the Lord have his habitation. . . . Unto the Lord we 
offer a sacrifice of meat and pray for thy Fire, that it may 
be our help, but to those who hate us may it be a hurt even 
as with weapons. . . . May I be thine, with thy righteous- 
ness and thy good mind, and care for the poor. May I 
declare thee (as a spirit) apart from the Daevas and (evil) 
men. If really, O Wise Lord, thou art (one) with right- 
eousness and good mind, then give me a sign that I may 
approach thee more devoutly. Only Thee do I know ; save 
me through thy righteousness. Teach me the path of right- 
eousness trod by the good mind living in thy saints, that 
path which consists in the precepts of the saviours of men." 



382 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Zoroaster recognizes the existence of evil, expressed 
strongly in the behaviour of those oppressors whom he de- 
nounces. He also recognizes the spiritual power and angelic 
character of the Good Mind, Right (R.ighteousness), Faith, 
and Piety, yet without including them in any group of the 
Spentas (holy ones). In his devotion to the Spirit he 
adores, in his assurance that this Spirit will lead him to vic- 
tory, in his exultation over fallen foes, in his appeal to the 
sword and grim determination to extirpate unbelievers, he 
is a Mahommed of the Ayrans, certainly the most heroic 
religious figure on the Aryan stage. In the extracts given 
above almost all the theology of the Gathas is contained. 
It will be noticed that Zoroaster hates all those who assume 
to be gods besides Ormuzd ; yet of course he does not deny 
the existence of nature-spirits, such as the " evil wind " 
and virtuous Sun, whom sinners repudiate and of whom 
he speaks as of a spirit. He knows the Judgment Bridge 
which rests on Mount Alborj, and reveres both. But he 
cares not at all for any gods save God as manifested in his 
Right Order, Piety, Good Mind, and coming kingdom. His 
first is the prayer, " Thy kingdom come ; thy will be done 
on earth as it is in Heaven." His first the conception of 
heaven and hell as mental states, " The mind is its own place 
and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." 
God is within us ; our first care is to attain God's good 
mind, and our second is to relieve all suffering (moral and 
physical) and shelter the honest poor. Thus he is first also 
to make public service a part of religion. 

Of liberal thought there is striking evidence in the lauda- 
tion of Turanians who serve God ; no chosen people is God's ; 
but each man as an individual must answer to God. On the 
other hand, the heretic is no object of mercy. The Zoro- 
astrian will shelter the " honest poor," but not the unbe- 
liever ; no heretic is honest, he is a son of the Lie. So, too, 
in later days, if a physician wishes to try a new cure which 
may be dangerous, he is enjoined to try it on a heretic not on 
a believer. 



RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 3^3 

The recrudescence of popular religion becomes manifest 
even in the literature next following the expression of Zoro- 
aster's own belief in the Gathas. The nature-gods, even the 
Horn, which he would not even name but which he inveighed 
against, rise again as spirits worthy of worship, and are 
addressed in terms which show that they are virtually gods. 
Then Zoroaster himself is revered. The Hostile Spirit, 
Angra Mainyu, who appears only once so named in the 
Gathas, becomes the substitute for the more indefinite Lie- 
Spirit, which Zoroaster abhorred. Finally Zoroaster's Holy 
Spirit is interpreted as but one aspect of God, as the Evil 
Mind is another aspect, an idea that never occurred to Zo- 
roaster, to whom the Evil Mind and Wise Spirit were anti- 
thetic but only Mazda was immortal. 

One of the first changes occurs in the schematic grouping 
of the archangels. These formed at first no fixed group, 
their number was indeterminate ; they with Ormuzd made a 
holy body, in which, however, it was uncertain whether 
Fire was felt to be an " archangel " or not. The Gathas 
mention them but not as a unit and do not confine the epithet 
" good " to the Good Mind. But in the first literature after 
the Gathas they appear as a fixed band with unvarying attri- 
butes and places. They have long since been compared not 
only with the Vedic Adityas, also a group chiefly of abstrac- 
tions, and with Babylonian " sevens," but also with the 
Hebraic archangels of Tobit, xii. 15, and Apocalypse, v. 6, 
" the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the earth." 
The first is Vohumano, the Good Mind of God, who works 
in man, concerns himself with the flock and the faithful, 
welcomes the good to heaven, and is half person from the 
beginning. Later he has a special cult of his own. He is 
aided by the Moon, in whom are the seeds of the flock. 
Next comes Asha Vahishta, Best Truth or Righteousness, or 
Right Order, who cares for Fire. Then comes Khshathra 
Vairya, Desired Power, the Kingdom of God as his author- 
ity which is to rule the world; but as an angel this being 
has the care of metals, emblematic of power. These sit on 



384 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

God's right hand; opposite to God sits Sraosha, Faith or 
Obedience. On the left sit the female forms, Spenta Ar- 
maiti, Holy Piety, goddess of earth, and the inseparable pair 
called Haurvatat and Ameretat, Wholeness or Holiness and 
Immortality, who together care for water and plants.^ 

These collectively are the " Immortal Holy Ones," ^ 
Amesha Spentas, who appear as a group as early as the 
Haptanghaiti or first prose. Plutarch (50-120 A. d.) knows 
them as characteristic of the Magian cult and renders their 
names into Greek as Eunoia, Aletheia, Eunomia, Sophia, 
Ploutos, and (for Ameretat) "worker of good hap- 
piness " (in Strabo as Anatotos, i.e. amardatos) . The prev- 
alence of Persian Arta-names (e.g. Artaxerxes) betrays 
familiarity with the Asha, arta, idea of righteousness. In 
the later texts, these angels are anthropomorphized enough 
to ride horseback and have attendants, who are the old 
nature-gods. These Amshaspands, as they are called later, 
are also assigned to different days and months and each has 
a peculiar flower and colour. Thus Vohumano has white 
as his colour, white jasmine as his flower, one day of each 
month is his (compare our saints' days), and he has one 
double month under his especial charge. The later scheme 
then assigns one selected demon as the special opponent of 
each archangel. 

The elements of later Zoroastrianism, partially recognized 
by the founder, are further the " holy ones " in general, 
namely the Yazatas, worshipful ones (hagioi or hagnoi from 
the same root), the modern Izads, a name which at times 
includes Ormuzd but generally designates a special division 
of holy ones below the archangels, of whom Ormuzd may 
be regarded as the " greatest holy one." The Yazatas also 
embrace the archangels and were naturally enough called 

1 Sraosha may have been added later to keep intact the number 
which was diminished by one when Ormuzd himself was with- 
drawn from the group, which originally merely represented the 
Ahuramazdas as a body consisting of God and his attributes. Asha, 
Vohumano, and Mazda are often grouped as a triad. 

2 Spenta is etymologically " holy " but traditionally " bountiful." 



RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 3^5 

gods by the Greeks. Thus Plutarch speaks of twenty-four 
gods besides the archangels. The Yasna recognizes " three 
and thirty lords " of the ritual (compare the three-and- 
thirty gods of the Rig Veda). These Yazatas are the Theoi 
Basileioi who have charge of different parts of the earth. 
At first there is no fixed line between these semi-divine 
beings. Fire appears as an archangel in Yasna i, 2, and 
in the Yasht dedicated to Faith this angel " sits with the 
Amesha Spentas." But usually the old nature-gods serve 
as helpers of the greater spirits. Thus Fire is the helper 
of Asha (Right) or Truth, who is opposed by Indra, as 
Vohumano is opposed by Aka-mano. The third archangel, 
Khshathra, Eunomia, the Power of God, is helped by Mithra, 
being opposed by Saurva (perhaps Vedic Sharva, Rudra). 
Spenta Armaiti, practical Piety, whose charge is earth, is 
the Sophia of the Greek and as such is opposed by Taro- 
maiti or Pairimaiti (Pride, Wrong Thought), as also by 
Naonhaithya (the Vedic Nasatya). The pair known as 
Haurvatat and Ameretat (Wholeness and Immortality) care 
for water and plants, embodying the idea of the water and 
tree of life, the later personified in the white Horn (Gao- 
kerena), the Vedic Soma-plant.^ 

The nature-gods thus included in the mythological scheme 
are first of all Fire and the Sun, then Water and the Horn 
(Moon-plant), which appear as most worthy of worship in 
the Yasna, and then a number of other gods, some of which 
are good and some originally evil. At the same early period, 
possibly recognized by Zoroaster himself as Yazatas, the 
Manes or spirits of beings become prominent. These are 
the Fravashis ("confession," souls of the dead), who help 
men in battle, protect them through life, and accompany 
spirits to the next world. They are treated in the texts as 
if they were individual guardian angels of each living per- 
son. In the creation they appear as the souls before they 
are embodied, but their original identity with the souls of 

1 Compare Darmesteter, Haurvatat et Ameretat, Paris, 1875. In 
the earlier texts these two are scarcely personitied. 



386 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

the departed is certain, though the Zoroastrian presentation 
veils this conception. At death the Fravashi archetype 
unites with the soul. 

The number of angels is practically unlimited. One of 
the Yashts, which are dedicated to the chief Yazatas, speaks 
of ten thousand of them. Fire is the most important, as it 
becomes the sign of the later faith and of the Fire- Wor- 
shippers. Fire, the son of Ormuzd, as Piety is his daugh- 
ter, is the life-heat and the " glory " of kings. With him is 
associated the (Vedic) Nairyosanha (Narashansa), the 
angel bringing God's word to man, though in the Veda he is 
the genius identified with Fire bringing man's praise to the 
gods. Fire-altars, not necessarily in temples, were erected 
all over ancient Iran. The cult may have been strength- 
ened by the natural awe of naphtha-wells, but could not have 
started with such a source. Water, too, and the heavenly 
stream, Ardvi Sura Anahita, were objects of far-reaching 
worship as the source of all life (Anahita was a Semitic 
figure, the goddesses of productivity). Reverence was 
paid also to the eye of Ormuzd, the sun, to the moon, and 
to the star Tishtrya (Sirius), as remover of drought (Apao- 
sha, ofiicial opponent of this star). The genius of right as 
justice, Rashnu, who with golden scales weighs the deeds of 
the dead, is associated with Faith (Sraosha) and Mithra, as 
three judges of the dead (compare Minos, Aeacus, and 
Rhadamanthus, or Christ, Gabriel, and Michael), and to 
them are devoted the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth Yashts, 
while the fourteenth is dedicated to the personification of 
the Demon-slayer (Verethraghna), who in the Sassanian 
period, beginning in the third century a. d., as genius of 
victory, attains his highest importance. Less important but 
still venerable and actually worshipped are mountains, winds 
(some winds are evil, however), heaven, earth, the native 
abstractions, Daena (Din), "Religion," Manthra Spenta, 
the " Holy Word " of Ormuzd regarded as an angel ; End- 
less Light, Aniran ; and the Hom, to whom are dedicated 
not only the twentieth Yasht but also Yasna 9, 10, and 11. 



RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 3^7 

The ministers of the Yazatas come still later, such as Peace, 
Glory, Blessing (Afriti), and there are other divine beings 
not grouped with the Yazatas, the most remarkable of whom 
is the three-legged ass, Khara, which stands in the earth- 
surrounding sea, Vourukasha, and helps govern the world; 
also a sacred ox, three birds of magical power, etc., all astro- 
logical or mythological creatures retained in the net of the 
popular religious sense and utilized by the faith, much as 
pagan belief was utilized by Christianity. This whole class 
of spiritual beings is of the highest significance. It implies 
that already, in the earliest stage after the prophet, mythol- 
ogy was again become one of the chief elements of the 
religion. 

Opposed to all the host of the Wise Spirit stands the host 
of the Evil Spirit, who is at first the Lie-demon and then 
becomes the Hostile or Harmful Spirit, Angra Mainyu, 
Ahriman. In the first conception there are two abstractions, 
the Best and Worst Thought, presented as spirits utterly 
opposed and creating good and evil in the world under all 
forms. Both are primeval. To Zoroaster this evil spirit is 
always the Lie-demon, the evil thought as opposed to the 
good thought or the wise spirit, Spenta Mainyu, who is 
sometimes thought of as an attribute of Ormuzd and some- 
times is Ormuzd himself. But Ahriman is never the equal 
of Ormuzd. He is handicapped by possessing only " back- 
ward knowledge " ; he cannot foresee and hence cannot initi- 
ate attacks on God. All he can do is to set up an opposed 
power as often as Ormuzd invents a new means of attack. 
Hence Ahriman is always too late, which shows that the 
dualism is not one of equal powers but that one is fore- 
doomed to defeat. In Zoroaster's own Gathas it is clear 
that he expects the ultimate victory of the Wise Spirit, to 
which he himself with every true believer would contribute. 

Next to Ahriman the most striking figure on the side of 
evil is Asmodeus, as he is called in the Book of Tobit, that 
is Aeshma Daeva, named in the Yasna as a demon of wrath. 
His name, from ish, " throw " or " strike," reminds one of 



388 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Diabolos, but he is not so much " the accuser " as the furi- 
ous smiter, the especial foe of the Faith, the impersonation 
of rapine and invasion, and the chief scourge of the faithful. 
In Jewish lore he loved Sara and destroyed her seven hus- 
bands.^ The Nasu, or corpse-demon, is also a popular evil 
spirit. As already remarked, some ancient gods appear 
here on the side of evil opposed to the archangels. Indra 
and Nasatya (gods in the Mitanni inscription of 1400 b, c.) 
represent to the Zoroastrian " Killing " and " Disobedience " 
( Naonhaithya, not a twin as in India). Agashi, the Evil 
Eye, may belong to this daeva-group, of whom none is so 
sinful as Aeshma, who is so inveterate a quarreller that, if 
he cannot make trouble among his foes, he does not hesi- 
tate to set at odds the members of his own community ; as 
Narada, the god-like seer of India, makes men quarrel if he 
can and, when he cannot do this, rouses the gods to quarrel. 
Abstractions such as envy, pride, old age, etc., in brief 
whatever injures man physically or morally, whether dis- 
eases or hurricane, drought, lust, or sloth, are demons born 
of Ahriman's will and fighting for him. There are others 
who are also not daevas but aiders of daevas, the Yatus, 
known to the Veda as sorcerers; the Druj, equally old; and 
the Pairikas, a more modern creation, who are associated 
with bandits and wolves. Pairikas are fair maidens super- 
naturally endowed with evil, who work in the earth, the 
plants, and the waters, bewitching the stars, so that they 
give no rain. In the Yashts they appear as " worm-stars," 
combatted by Sirius, and they may have been originally 
shooting-stars or meteors. One of them is Drought itself. 
Later (Persian) mythology converted them into fair maid- 
ens, sirens (English Peri). Among the beings opposed to 
Ormuzd a conspicuous place is taken by the dragon, Azhi 
Dahaka, whose home is in Bapel (Babylon), a Druj half 
human, half beast, with three heads, who overcomes Yima 
and rules a thousand years, possibly, as Darmesteter sup- 

iWhen Tobit's son finally married Sara, Asmodeus was driven 
away by the fume of a dead fish (compare Paradise Lost, iv. 168). 



RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 3^9 

posed, a reminiscence of Semitic control. This dragon 
creates drought and disease. Planets, scorpions, snakes, 
and frogs, and the mythical Ganderewa Upapa or evil spirit 
in the water (Vedic Gandharva, also in water) are lesser 
creations of Ahriman. Unbelievers, Kavis, Karpans, belong 
to the general class of opponents of Ormuzd. Heretics are 
always prominent, as if the religion of Zoroaster had never 
been without its foes, as its practical teaching was in reality 
never fully sustained. Thus in regard to the dakhma, tower 
for exposing the dead, despite the strict injunctions against 
burning and burying, the older (or usual) custom prevailed 
in part and the erection of the dakhma was not universal. 
The custom of exposing the dead was Median; Zoroaster 
himself says nothing about it. It was probably a local 
practice, such as is still found in India, America, etc. 

The base of Zoroastrian morality is neither that of India 
nor of the Semites. Every man is responsible for his own 
deeds ; every act of his is recorded ; he alone is the architect 
of his own future fate. The shibboleth of this behef is em- 
bodied in the standing formula, " good thought, good word, 
good deed " ; " I practise good, and renounce evil." But this 
goodness does not rest with a negative avoidance of evil. 
The practice of good includes justice, mercy, generosity, and 
kindness in general. Practically it is shown especially in 
business relations, for it emphasizes avoidance not only of 
lying but of debts. What Herodotus (I, 133) says of the 
Persians is true of all Zoroastrians : " They are not al- 
lowed even to mention the things they are not allowed to do. 
The greatest disgrace for them is to tell a lie; and next to 
that to be in debt, and this for many other reasons, but espe- 
cially because they think that one who is in debt must neces- 
sarily tell lies." Physical culture was extolled as good and 
moderation in eating and in drinking intoxicants. Sexual 
relations were in general on a footing appropriate to high 
thinking and wicked women are cursed, sexual sin, seduc- 
tion, etc., condemned. But it must be granted that, as asceti- 
cism was tabooed, so there was no attempt to induce the 



390 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Zoroastrian to rise to a higher plane in relation to women. 
Concubinage was allowed; polygamy was common; incest 
was the rule. And it must be admitted also that it is not 
religion alone which makes the Zoroastrian sober and mod- 
erate. The race is sober and restrained, not given to ex- 
cesses. How far the religion is from teaching ascetic prac- 
tices may be seen from the statement that wealth and a 
large family are signs of religious virtue (the poor man is 
not so good as the rich man) ; the remark that "who sows 
corn sows religion"; the injunction as a religious rule to 
practise agriculture and slay vermin and raise dogs and 
cattle. All this points to a practical morality, the aim of 
which is to improve economic conditions as well as to fur- 
ther religion. Compare Vendidad 4, 47-49 : " He who has 
children is far better than he who is childless; he who has 
riches is far better than he who has none; and he who 
fills himself with meat is filled with the good spirit more 
than he who does not eat meat, for the latter is no better 
than a dead man, and the former is better than he by the 
worth of an ox, by the worth of a man," a statement in 
striking contrast with the asceticism cultivated by the Mani- 
chaeans. 

This very practical religion teaches that to atone for sins 
one may be purified by doing good, as well as by being 
anointed with holy things or by being beaten. Thus, if one 
has sinned, let him build a useful bridge or dig a canal and 
so equalize the wrong with a good act, or go farther and 
let the good outweigh the evil. It is necessary to know this 
in order to comprehend the doctrine of that even state after 
death which is neither heaven nor hell. In all cases, how- 
ever, one must repent of the sin and confess it.^ Trivial 
sins are many in number, such as going barefoot, combing 
one's hair over the fire, etc., but this is due to the feeling of 

1 It has been said that " The difference between Judaism and 
Zoroastrianism is that though both have retribution after death, 
Judaism insists on repentance." The implication is erroneous, 
Zoroaster insists on repentance. 



RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 391 

great veneration for the earth and fire as divinities, and 
what is trivial to us is of course not a norm in such cases. 
The gravest sin in our eyes, on the other hand, is to the 
Zoroastrian a law of conduct. This is legalized incest. 
The marriage of the closest relations is not looked upon as 
a sin but a duty, to keep pure the strain of blood. Yet this 
again is not a religious but a racial matter, and it is need- 
less to say that modern Parsis do not practise the custom 
(common to Persia and Egypt). 

The confession and prayer of repentance of the Zoro- 
astrian religion show how fundamental are two points, faith 
in Zoroaster and belief in the resurrection. The worship of \/ 
Mazda, the Wise Spirit, is bound up with the faith in the 
prophet, and is now inconceivable without it. Thus the 
confession says : " I am a worshipper of Ahura Mazda, a 
member of the order of Zoroaster. This I confess, as a 
praiser and confessor of the religion, and I praise aloud the 
thought well thought, the word well said, the deed well done. 
I praise the faith of Mazda, the holy belief which is the best 
and most beautiful belief, the most beautiful of all religions 
which exist and are yet to be, the faith of Ahura Mazda, the 
faith of Zoroaster. Unto Ahura Mazda do I ascribe all 
good and such shall be the worship of the Mazdayasnians 
forever." 

The Patet Erani is a compendium of Zoroastrian belief: 
" I doubt not the good faith, the faith in Mazda. I believe 
in the good faith. I believe in the coming resurrection, in 
the later body, in the passage of the Bridge of Judgment, in 
a future recompense of good deeds, and in the punishment 
hereafter of evil deeds; in the perpetual state of paradise 
for the good and in the annihilation of hell, of the Evil One, 
and of all the evil demons. I believe that Ormuzd will at 
last be victorious and that Ahriman will perish, together with 
all the off-shoots of darkness. All that I ought to have 
thought and have not thought, all that I ought to have said 
and have not said, all that I ought to have done and have 
not done, all that I ought to have commanded others to do 



392 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

and have not commanded, and all that I ought not to have' 
thought and yet have thought, all that I ought not to hav6 
said and yet have said, all that I ought not to have done and 
yet have done, all that I ought not to have commanded and 
yet have commanded — for every thought, word, and deed, 
whether of the body or of the spirit, whether of earth or of 
heaven, I pray for forgiveness and repent of every sin with 
this Paf^^ (repentance prayer)." 

In the Chapter of Admonitions, the Zoroastrian is enjoined 
to let his light shine " in the name and love of the Lord." 
How practical, not mystical, these admonitions are, appears 
from the command : " Shine ever with the true light ; in- 
crease in wealth and in goodness; learn purity; be worthy 
of praise ; think good thoughts ; speak good words ; do good 
deeds ; be true to the Wise Spirit, obedient to the law, mod- 
est, kind, not cruel, not wrathful, not shameful, not covet- 
ous, not malicious, not envious, not haughty, not despiteful, 
not lustful. Do not steal. Do not rob others of their wives. 
Do good. Have no agreement with a wicked man. Combat 
evil with righteousness ; speak decently in assemblies of men 
and modestly before kings; displease not thy mother; be 
just; be pure; and may all the archangels send thee good 
thought, speech, and deed, wisdom, sweetness, prosperity, 
and f ruitf ulness." The form is late, the thought is old ; the 
essence of Zoroaster's religion is in these words. 

In accordance with the view of most races, the Aryans 
all had the conviction that man existed after death. But 
the Iranians added to this simple conception various modi- 
fications, not entirely their own, since others also had the 
same, but, as far as we can tell, self-invented and due wholly 
to Iranian thought. 

What we call soul is sub-divided into many different ele- 
ments. It is recognized that after death the body passes 
away, is burned or swept off by a flood, but nothing destroys 
the man's soul. His spirit, Ahu, his thinking conscience, 
Daena, his intelligence, Baoda, his soul, Urvan, and his 
genius, Fravashi, abide. These are not all the elements of 



RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 393 

the soul, since there are others like these or synonymous 
with them, such as tavishi, power; but the point of special 
importance is that all these parts of the soul are personal, 
individual, separate from each other. They are in short 
personified faculties, and it is not important whether they 
include wisdom in one form or in two, as innate and ac- 
quired, or take in or leave out thought, wish, word, and 
other factors. In brief, the constituents are sometimes as 
many as eleven; but of these the factors first mentioned 
are the commonest and those without which no one can be 
imagined by a Persian. The Fravashi, which is " like a 
well-winged bird," is the genius or the idea-soul that existed 
originally in the mind of God, and it corresponds to the per- 
sonality of the Egyptian Ka, except that it is not material ; 
but on the other hand it is like the ancestral, also winged, 
spirit of the Hindu. There is no borrowing here from 
Egypt, for in the Egyptian belief it is the Ba soul which has 
wings and in Persia the idea of the Ba is represented 
rather by the Urvan, that is the soul that wills. In Egypt 
it is the Ab or heart which meets a man after death and 
accuses him of wrong, but in the Zoroastrian faith the 
Conscience, Daena, does this. The man dies, but his will 
and conscience and guardian genius continue to exist. His 
conscience meets him on the third day after death, in the 
form of a fair maid or a foul hag, and as his conscience 
accuses or acquits him, so he fares forth into the world of 
spirits, accompanied by pleasant or unpleasant surroundings, 
till the soul's deeds are weighed in the balance, and it is sent 
to heaven or hell or purgatory. Such in brief is the out- 
line of what the soul has to expect. The gods who act as 
judges of the soul may be a later improvement on the bal- 
ance-idea, and it is possible that still earlier the Bridge of 
Separation itself acted as a sort of balance or at least acted 
automatically. It would then be a parallel to the log over 
which the American Indian has to cross to get to the 
Happy Hunting Grounds. If an Indian has been brave 
(virtuous, according to Redskin morality), the log lets him 



394 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

over, but otherwise he cannot pass over it but slips into 
the foul swamp beneath, never to emerge. So possibly the 
Cinvat Bridge turned down the sinner and let the good go 
by, irrespective of a judge, being itself the automatic bal- 
ance, while the later belief represented its narrowing to a 
razor's edge as a result of the judgment. When the bridge 
is first mentioned, there is nothing said of a judgment at 
the bridge, perhaps the rainbow or Milky Way ; it was but 
a passage to heaven. The soul that was allowed to pass it 
entered felicity and waited in heaven for the final judgment 
with the coming of the saviour. The balance of later be- 
lief is a pair of scales held in the hands. But the original 
judgment was the one at the world's end; no sentence was 
pronounced at first by Mithra and the other judges, nor were 
the soul's deeds weighed, but Ormuzd alone judged it at the 
last day. 

The soul wills. On the choice of this willing soul, the 
Urvan, depends the fate of the man. Animals also have 
a measure of free-will. The author of the thirty-first 
Yasna tries to determine why some animals are good and 
some are evil. Ormuzd has not only determined the right 
path for the cow, but also granted it some freedom of will 
in following that path. Man, weak and wavering between 
good and ill, is watched by the gods and finally brought to 
account. Ormuzd is here the " father of the Good Mind, 
the founder of Asha " (righteousness); he "opened the 
way for the cow, whether to leave the husbandman or not,'* 
yet *' chose for her the husbandman " ; but for man Ormuzd 
" in the beginning formed his being and conscience and in- 
telligence . . . and gave him works and words, whereby he 
might freely express his belief." 

The soul's journey after death is described in Yasht 22 
and 24. Met by its own conscience the soul is heard and 
judged by Mithra, Sraosha, and Rashnu, and then, if pure, 
passes the bridge over hell and through the worlds of good 
thought, word, and deed (stars, moon, and sun), and gets 
at last to the sphere of eternal light, where dwells Ormuzd 



RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 395 

in peace. Just opposite, as far below, the sinners who fall 
from the bridge dwell in nethermost hell, where, though 
crowded thickly together, each lost soul thinks he is alone. 
Darkness, cold, and stenches characterize this " home of the 
Lie." But those who have done neither better nor worse 
go to the spot called " equilibrium," Hamestakan, possibly- 
known, as a sort of mild purgatory, as early as the Gathas. 
The suffering here is slight, being only the change from 
cold to heat, inclement cold and burdensome heat following 
one after the other. It is between the earth and the stars. 
Still later, this purgatory has two compartments, one for 
those who are a little better than bad, and one for those 
a little worse than good, but this is too refined for the orig- 
inal idea, which simply provides for those who are not good 
enough to go to heaven or bad enough for hell. The whole 
theory, however, of Hamestakan may be derived from 
Christian sources, as the description of it is given in texts 
recognizing Jews and Christians.^ 

But hell is not eternal. When, born of the seed of Zo- 
roaster, miraculously preserved, the saviour, Saoshyant, 
Astvat-ereta, appears, at the end of time limited and the 
beginning of time unlimited, he first raises the dead bones 
that have been awaiting his coming and then each good 
soul is reclothed with his old garment of flesh. Therefore 
this is called the " freshening " time, frashokarate (Yasna 
62, 3), explained in the Vendidad (18, 51) as the day when 
the word incarnate in man shall be given up by the angel 
of the Earth at the day of the resurrection, and the Fra- 
vashis shall cease to revolve in their sphere (Yasht 13, 58). 
Saoshyan is not the first prophet. The last Age, of 3,000 
years, is that of Zoroaster and the two predecessors of 
Saoshyant, Hushedar or Aushetar (Oshedar) and Hus- 
hedar-mah or Aushetarmah (Oshadarmah). Each is born 

1 In Yasna 33, i, it is said: "Deeds most just will he do toward 
the wicked, as toward the righteous, and toward him whose deeds 
of deceit and righteous deeds combine (in equal measure)." Yet 
the last part may be differently interpreted, so that this early refer- 
ence to purgatory would fail. 



39^ THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

of a pure maiden by immaculate conception ^ after she has 
bathed in the sacred lake. For the Messianic idea, the most 
important passage is the Bundahish 30, a work composed 
long after the Christian era but supposed to revert to a lost 
Avestan text. With the coming of this saviour comes the 
end of the Kingdom of the Evil One, who is burned in 
molten metal, which will overpour the whole world. But 
to the good this will seem like warm milk, while it will de- 
stroy the evil. Hell is thus purified and the world is then 
renewed and made immortal. Friend will know friend 
again and families recognize each other and rejoice for 
ever in happiness. The purification will not be instanta- 
neous but will last for fifty-seven years and there will be 
fifteen men and fifteen maids who will help in the great 
task. In some texts, the saviour is Zoroaster himself re- 
born. 

An earlier view of the future life may be represented in 
the story of the Earthly Paradise. Hindu and Iranian 
know Yama or Yima as the first man (Jemshid of Persian 
legend), who is here fitted into the scheme of things as one 
urged at first to take upon himself the task later assumed 
by Zoroaster, but he is not spiritual enough, or is cajoled 
by evil spirits, and feeds the faithful with beef, perhaps 
to make mortals immortal. He is then commissioned to 
build an enclosure, vara, where men may grow up secure 
from the Evil One, who is already awake and eager to tempt 
men to his side. The first conception is that of a past para- 
dise on earth ; it may be that it also implied a future para- 
dise, which afterwards becomes incongruous with orthodox 
eschatology. Yima received from Ormuzd the ring and 
dagger of authority and ruled for three hundred winters; 
he prayed earth to " increase a third " and again to increase 
a third, during nine hundred years. Then there was a meet- 
ing of the gods called by Ormuzd in Airyana Vaeja and a 

iThe "glory" which fills the expected mother of the coming 
saviour also fills the archangels who restore the world. This 
"glory" plays a great role in Mithraism (see below). 



RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 397 

meeting of mortals called by Yima. Then Ormuzd told 
Yima that fatal winters and snow were coming; he should 
build an enclosure and in it place the seeds of living things ; 
there sweet water will flow and birds sing, and food never 
fail. And Yima brought there the seeds of the best, men, 
cattle, and trees, two of each kind; and there was no im- 
potent person there, nor poverty, nor meanness ; he brought 
in all a thousand and three hundred and six hundred seeds, 
to the various squares and streets of the enclosure ; and 
stamped upon the earth and kneaded it with his hands and 
sealed the enclosure and set a window in it (so much is 
obviously of the past). And there a year is as a day and 
there are lights created and uncreated. And once in forty 
years are born a male and female to every couple; and 
there men live the happiest Hfe; and there is neither cold 
nor heat nor death (this indicates a present paradise). 
Later views made this paradise impossible; it was neces- 
sary to get the blessed out, so they were given only a life 
of one hundred and fifty years. The commentary, where 
the text says that winters will come, has markush, rain, 
which is an attempt to identify the legend with the Biblical 
deluge story. Malkosh (Hebrev/ rain) thus introduced be- 
comes a demon of storm and rain. This element and the 
belief in a future deluge are found only in later texts. In 
India, Yama's home is first a paradise in the sky and then 
a home on earth where the wicked are punished; but even 
in this later conception the palace of Yama himself is a 
delightful place. Usener regards Yima as a future re- 
newer of earth. Whether this legend and other Persian 
views of a future life affected Christian ideas is matter of 
dispute. Although the later view of the divisions of time 
is not known even to the Vendidad, yet there was an early 
belief in a spiritual creation, of which the late view is an 
outgrowth. According to it, limited time is divided into 
four periods of three thousand years each, during the first 
O'f which Ormuzd strikes down Ahriman with the holy 
word. In the second period Ormuzd makes the world, as- 



398 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

sisted by the good spirits, and in the third, Ahriman, as a 
serpent with his paramour Lust, afflicts creation with evil, 
but at last he is driven back and heaven is walled in, while 
the prototypes of men and animals die comforted in the 
hope of the coming of Zoroaster.^ Yima is now born and 
at last Zoroaster appears. The last period begins with 
Zoroaster. 

This fourth period continues till the judgment day at the 
end of the twelve thousand years. This part of the theory 
of cycles is known before the Sassanian period (c. third 
century a. d.). Later belief also imagines a cosmic egg and 
a three-fold heaven ; it also makes Ormuzd " create the 
world out of nothing " during six periods of a year each, 
probably in imitation of Genesis. The seven zones as sub- 
divisions of the earth thus created are of an older period 
(compare the seven continents of the Hindus). The ques- 
tion of time occupied philosophical thought in the later 
period and caused two heresies to arise, one that of the 
Zervanites and one that of the . Gayomarts. The former 
maintained that Ormuzd and Ahriman were antithetic forms 
of Time or Fate as divine (God) ; the latter, that Ahriman 
was born in a moment of weakness of Ormuzd. These 
philosophical speculations, however, have nothing to do with 
the religion of Zoroaster; they are late attempts to explain 
the relation of temporal to absolute time. The Zervanite 
position is interesting because of parallel explanations in 
other philosophies and the Gayomart position because of 
its uniqueness. 

As we have seen, the second period of the religion, rep- 
resented in the Yasna not attributable to Zoroaster, shows 
already a recrudescence of nature worship, though the 

1 These prototypes are called Gayomart and Goshurvan, against 
whom the Evil One sets Death, the " bone-disperser." Out of 
these arise the future men and cattle, men in particular appearing 
first in plant-form, whose two branches are brother and sister, 
parents of twins from whom come seven pairs, as ancestors of 
present human beings. Human monsters come from another sprout 
of Gayomart's seed. 



RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 399 

adoration paid to natural objects, sun, stars, moon-plant, 
etc., is carefully subordinated to that of the Lord. Yet it 
is still a fresh vivid religion, without that substitution of 
creed and cult for feeling and faith which marks the later 
aspects of Zoroastrianism. But in the period now to be dis- 
cussed, represented by the latest scriptures, formalism re- 
places fervour. Such is apt to be the case in every religion, 
and the higher the religion the more prone is it to suffer a 
lowering of ideals. This is because its original greatness 
is due to the intensity of the primitive faith; the more 
intense this is, the harder is it to maintain. Decadence is 
inevitable; it is only in the manner of decadence that dis- 
tinctions occur. The first glow may pale out in indiffer- 
ence and the religion merge with a faith at first alien to it ; 
or the later religion may exaggerate certain factors which 
make for deterioration, such as the mystical or sensuous ele- 
ment; or it may preserve its features and lose its soul. 
In Zoroastrianism there arose an exaggeration of formal- 
ism based on fear of the impure, the evil with which man 
is ever in contact. The dread of this overpowered the 
spirit of the old belief. The evil in the world is not now 
so much the Lie as it is the unclean. The ideal of Truth 
as righteousness becomes an ideal of purity. In the 
establishment of a scheme of life for the avoidance of im- 
purity there is little room for religion, but a great oppor- 
tunity for religionism. Zoroaster was content to laud cows 
and dogs as animals useful to the work of civilization, right 
order ; but the later Zoroastrian began to worry about other 
animals. Where, for example, was he to place animals not 
mentioned by Zoroaster? Scorpions and snakes, he ap- 
pears to think, are clearly the work of the Evil One; but 
how about the peacock, the hawk, and the domestic cock? 
Can we be really religious unless we settle the status of these 
creatures ? The cock must be got into the scheme of things 
or religion will go astray. This meticulous scrupulosity 
begins to occupy the believer's mind ; one point becomes as 
important as another; physical and moral values are con- 



400 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

fused; bodily purity is exalted as much as spiritual purity, 
till the spirit of Zoroaster evaporates in the dry-rot of 
ritualism. His fervid faith fades into formulas for the 
preservation of corporal soundness. Of course the cock, 
v^hich hails the light of morn and is awakened by Faith, in 
order that it in turn may awaken men to renew the fight 
against evil, may be discussed and its status determined 
with no great demoralization of the faith; but the discus- 
sion is symptomatic. Still more so are the minute rules 
regarding purity. In the first form of the religion, purity 
was not very important. Ormuzd is not chiefly the pure 
but the Wise and Holy (Bountiful) Spirit; the shibboleth 
ashem vohu vahishtem means first " Truth (or Right) is the 
best good " ; later " Purity is the best good," right being 
truth or righteousness and this last becoming purity. In 
the Persian form this is perfectly clear. The Lie, the old 
original evil demon, is here the foe of order and the king 
lives according to right : " Thus says Darius the king, 
Those countries which became rebellious, the Lie made them 
rebellious, so that they deceived the people, but Ormuzd 
delivered them into my hand. Thus says Darius the king. 
Thou who shalt be king hereafter, be ever on thy guard 
against the Lie. What I have done I have done by the 
grace of Ormuzd . . . Ormuzd and the other gods that 
exist brought me aid because I was not hostile, nor a liar, 
nor a wrong-doer, neither I nor my family, but according 
to the right (righteousness) have I ruled." The dualism 
of the Gathas and of the Persian kings is that of truth 
versus untruth (dushivara, deceit, or drauga, lie). The 
right order, of the state as well as of heaven and the soul, 
depends on truth. Zoroaster was an economist, the min- 
ister of a king, and had in mind the orderliness of the state ; 
hence he lauds cattle and agriculture, as against nomadic 
life. To speak the truth, plough the land, and tend cattle 
are his highest virtues. The Vendidad on the other hand, 
while it lauds all these, teaches that it is as sinful to remain 
contaminated by touching something impure as it is vir- 



RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 40I 

tuous to speak the truth. All this may be due to the Magi ; 
it is, in any event, a priestly interpretation. 

The later Zoroastrian of the Vendidad lived apparently 
in constant fear of becoming impure ; he lived also under 
a scheme of life which regulated his whole existence. Pious 
and perturbed, he was ever asking what he was to do in 
case he came in contact with the smell of a corpse ten feet 
away; and when he was answered, asked again what he 
should do if he stood a hundred feet away. How many 
blows, he asks, will remove the sin of a man who breaks 
another's bones, for the first time, and again for the 
second time? How many years must a man remain in 
hell if he breaks his contract concerning a sheep, how many 
in case he breaks a contract concerning an ox ? Is the man 
himself or are his relatives, and if so how many, implicated 
in this breaking of a contract ? ^ And, with a new idea, to 
how many generations are the sins of the father visited 
upon his children? In how many places does holy Earth, 
if contaminated, feel herself aggrieved and in which places 
does she feel most aggrieved? When one has touched a 
corpse, must one wash oneself fifteen or thirty times? The 
Vendidad's letter is its spirit ; it is expressed in one phrase : 
" Next to life, purity is man's greatest good " ; but the 
purity here meant is that of purification effected by pun- 
ishment enjoined by the Ratu or priest for violation of 
rules. The passion of Zoroaster is now converted into a 
schedule of offences and expiations. 

This fall from religion to law and ritual is embodied in 
two prayers. The earlier is the prayer of Zoroaster: 
" The will of the Lord is the law of righteousness." The 
later Zoroastrian substitutes for this prayer, the Honover, 
the prayer: " Teach me the rules (of purification) for this 
world and the next." The natural concomitant of this 
tendency is the stress laid on vain repetitions. Thus in the 
Ormuzd Yasht it is said that if one pronounces the differ- 

^ 1 Here at least is one sensible question ; typical of the mixture of 
ritual and law. 



402 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

ent names and titles of Ormuzd, one will be protected on all 
sides from every form of evil.^ 

At this point it will be necessary to speak of the tradition 
which connects Zoroaster with the organized priesthood of 
the Magi, who, according to Herodotus (i. loi), were a 
war-Hke tribe of Medes, the names of whose early kings 
may be corruptions of Zoroastrian conceptions (Phraortes 
as Fravashi). We may well suppose that the degradation 
of the religion into the petty scheme of penances in the 
Vendidad reverts to a priesthood, not to the founder. The 
Magi appear to have adopted Zoroastrianism and of course 
Zoroaster is said to have been one of them. Possibly they 
have affected the cult in some particulars and as priests of 
the religion they may have been most instrumental in lower- 
ing its tone. But all this is matter of speculation and recent 
theories of the influence of the Magi in Zoroastrianism 
based on the foreign character of these priests are not con- 
vincing.2 The Magi were presumably Medes who assimi- 
lated the more or less aHen (Bactrian) Zoroastrian faith 
and became its representatives and priests; yet alien not 
so much in race as in spirit. As a matter of fact, the 
Zoroastrians of a later day were as a body alienated in spirit 

1 These titles are not strictly repetitions : Bestower of health, 
holy, glorious, protector, creator, king-ruling-by-his-own-will, he- 
who-does-not-deceive, he-who-is-not-deceived, weal, master of weal, 
beneficent, energetic, great, wise, light, source of light, wisdom, 
intellect, brilliant, majestic, best, most beautiful. Compare the 
Mohammedan titles of God. 

2 Professor Moulton in his Early Zoroastrianism, London, 1913, 
argues that the Magi were non-Aryan Shamans, originally a slave 
population (servant class?), against whom Zoroaster at first warred. 
Being neither Aryan nor Semitic, they altered or rejected the 
teaching which they did not understand. Exposure of the dead 
also is due to this source in Professor Moulton's opinion, though 
this is a Vedic (Aryan) custom. The Persians buried their dead, a 
practice denounced in the Vendidad ; but in the time of the Achae- 
menides the later Zoroastrian view may not have been prevalent, 
or perhaps was not yet arisen. Other Magian practices too may 
have been reassertions of old customs. Another suggestion made 
by Professor Moulton is that a Gaotema mentioned in the Yashts 
is Gautama Buddha, but no proof of such an extraordinary view 
is given. 



RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 4^3 

from the founder, just as many later Buddhists and Chris- 
tians were no true disciples of their masters, not be- 
cause they differed racially but because they differed men- 
tally and spiritually. In sum, the Magi, so far as we know, 
are an inherent part of the later religious body, who repre- 
sented it to the ancient world, probably not without reason. 
How old a constituent of that body they are, we know not. 
They do not appear in the Gathas and, though their absence 
there is not conclusive, in all probability Zoroaster had no 
such priests. In the Yashts they are once mentioned, but 
not in a passage above suspicion, and it may be that they 
were not active till the fourth century b. c, about the time 
the Vendidad was written. 

Another legend of the Vendidad, from which comes the 
story of Yima, is that of the temptation of Zoroaster. This 
resembles the temptation-scenes in the life of Christ and 
Buddha, with which, indeed, as explained below, it may be 
historically connected. 

The Evil One, Ahriman, first tries to kill the prophet 
and then to make him give up his plan of destroying the 
demons and Nasu. '' Do not destroy my creatures, O holy 
Zoroaster. Renounce the good law of the worshippers of 
Mazda and thou shalt gain the lordship of the whole world." 
But Zoroaster replies : " Never will I renounce the good 
law, though my body, my life, and my soul should be dis- 
banded." Then said again to him the Evil One : " By 
whose word wilt thou strike and repel the demons; by 
whose weapon will the good creatures repel my creatures ? " 
And Zoroaster answered : " The word of God shall be the 
weapon; the word taught me by the Wise Spirit. By his 
word will I strike, by his word will I repel the vile daevas. 
Spenta Mainyu, the good spirit, gave it me ; the archangels 
gave it me ; and by that word will I destroy the evil ones." 
And the prophet then uttered the prayer ever since repeated 
by the saints of his religion : " The will of the Lord is the 
law of righteousness. The gifts of the Good Mind are for 
him who works in this world for the Wise Spirit and wields, 
according to the will of Ahura, the power given to him to 



404 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

help the poor " (the Honover prayer). And the evil daevas 
fled, casting the evil eye, the wicked daevas that do evil, 
saying: "Let us gather together at the gate of hell (the 
head of Arezura), for he, the holy Zoroaster, is born. How 
can we slay him? For he is the stroke that fells the fiends." 
The general scheme of church organization is simple in 
Zoroastrianism. The adoration of Fire holds the first 
place. But Fire is not a mere natural power : " I sacri- 
fice to thee, Fire, son of Ormuzd, and to all fires and all 
waters and to all plants, for they are all made by God." 
The cult eventually became a worship of Fire as representa- 
tive of all that is holy and pure. The ordinary sacrifice 
was a libation of milk and horn and a meat-offering. The 
priest was not an hereditary officer; he went from house to 
house to offer sacrifice and also executed legal punishments. 
The Ratu or Raspi was the guardian of the young, an as- 
sistant to the chief priest, Zaotar. The priests had no po- 
litical power before the Sassanian period, when a hierarchy 
was established. Altogether it was a simple and devout 
congregation, hampered less by priestly ambition than by 
pious scrupulosity. The painful mysteries of Mithraism 
seem, however, to have begun early, since in the Mihr Yasht 
thirty stripes purge from sin; but fines might take the 
place of strokes. Death, menstruation, and childbirth were 
the greatest sources of impurity. At death the " devil- 
averting " dog must stand beside the dying. Purification, 
washing of oneself and vessels, fasting, and penance were 
means of ridding oneself of evil. Sacrifice was made to 
stars and to Mithra. To Ursa maior, for example, because 
this star-group kept off Pairikas ; to Sirius, because it kept 
off drought, and " is most beneficent when worshipped with 
sacrifice and propitiated." Ormuzd is represented as say- 
ing of Sirius : " I have created that star as worthy of 
sacrifice, as worthy of prayer, as worthy of propitiation as 
myself" (Tir Yasht). The language used of Mithra is 
of the same sort and prepares us for the later rise of Mith- 
raism. 



RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 405 

As compared with other reHgions, Zoroastrianism is more 
ritualistic than Confucianism; more spiritual than Baby- 
lonian religion; more practical and less speculative than 
Hinduism. It is a sect, not a national religion, drawing its 
adherents from all who are religiously minded. Its rise 
was in great part due to conversion by conquest and it 
throve only under political support. 

The historical connexion between the Persian and Chris- 
tian faiths is evident in one point, the heptarchy of angels, 
and may be suspected in others. Raphael, the healer, pre- 
sents prayers and heals earth when it is defiled, as Vohu- 
mano receives the suppliants and hears prayers. Gabriel, 
the man of God, mentioned in Daniel viii. i6; ix. 21 and 
Luke i. 19, 26, and Michael, the " great prince " and guard 
of Israel, Daniel x. 13 and xii. i, together with Uriel and 
Azazel all belong to the post-exilic period and do not seem 
to have been native Hebrew creations. The seventh chap- 
ter of Ezra shows that the king of Persia was interested 
in the service of the Hebrews and it is not a far cry to 
Zoroastrianism when we see that the Hebrews were pro- 
tected by a Zoroastrian monarch. The whole theory of 
guardian angels, Matthew viii. 10, Acts xii. 15, may be re- 
ferred to the same source. Yet on the other hand, with the 
exception of Asmodeus, there is no linguistic parallel be- 
tween the Hebrew and Persian spirits. Nevertheless, the 
character of such angels as Gabriel and Michael seems 
more of Persian than of Babylonian stamp. And when 
we come to the eschatological side, the influence of Persia 
seems predominant. We may say that the seven evil spir- 
its of Matthew xii. 45 are as well referred to Babylon as to 
Persia, and Revelations as a whole may reflect either source, 
but when we turn to specific details, such as the lake of 
fire and the thousand years of the reign of the evil Azhi 
Dahaka, we are irresistibly compelled to draw the parallels 
between the Christian and Persian rather than Babylonian 
faith. Even though we grant that Babylonian effect upon 
Zoroastrianism was greater and earlier than used to be be- 



406 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

lieved, yet it is not important from the Christian point of 
view whether the influence came directly or indirectly from 
Babylon, but whether we are to assume any influence at all. 
In Matthew v. 25 and 28, the resurrection of the dead is an 
event soon to come. The general doctrine was not confined 
to Persia, but was known to Greece and Egypt, yet, as far 
as Hebrew belief goes, it is not known in the earlier times ; 
while it is an essential belief of Zoroastrianism even in the 
earlier times. The hope of immortality expressed in the 
Psalms, xvi. 17 ; xlix. 63, is a trait not necessarily drawn 
from Persia, but it is significant that there is no such hope 
expressed till the Persian and Greek period. Under the 
Sassanians, on the other hand, the influence of the Jewish 
religion began to make itself felt in Zoroastrianism (com- 
pare Darmesteter, tme priere judeo-persane, Paris, 1891) 
and it is possible that this happened earlier; just as it is 
possible that Persian belief affected Babylon as well as 
that Babylonian belief affected Persia.^ As early as the 
seventh century before Christ and perhaps earlier the names 
of Persian gods were borrowed by Assyrians. 

The notion of a life after death is one found in many 
religions and though it is possible that the idea of a resur- 
rection may have been borrowed, it is not a necessary solu- 
tion. At any rate the idea of the Jews was developed quite 
independently, as it differs from that of the Zoroastrians. 
Nor does there seem to be any relation between the Bible 
and the Avesta in the doctrine of retribution and the con- 
ception of hell, which in the Jews' belief was a lake of 
fire near Jerusalem, while in Zoroastrianism it was a place 
cold and malodorous under the whole earth. The closest 
resemblances to Christian belief are to be found in the Arda 
Viraf, a late work in the vein of the Divina Comedia and 
perhaps influencing Dante's description. In the earhest 

1 On the relations between Babylon and Iran, compare ZDMG. 
50, 43 (1896). In Am. Jour, of Theology, xxi. 58f. (1917), Professor 
Carnoy seeks to prove that Varuna and Ormuzd derive from a 
Babylonian prototype, but his argument is based on what seems to 
the writer inconclusive parallelism (see above, p. 346). 



RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 407 

Jewish belief there is no general resurrection, only of the 
just or of some of the dead, whereas the Zoroastrians held 
to a universal resurrection. Again, the Zoroastrian belief 
implied a cosmic renewal of the world, which was not the 
Jewish idea. The Messiah belief again is not part of earliest 
Zoroastrianism, certainly not of the Gathic belief, in which 
hell is only the " abode of the worst mind " and Vohumano 
himself or itself is heaven (Gathas 30, 4, and 32, 15). 

In the earliest texts the word saviour is applied to the 
pious man who helps renovate the world ; to the prince who 
saves in the same way ; and to others who, like the Amesha- 
spentas, serve the good cause. It is only in post-Gathic 
literature that the word designates a special saviour. But 
by the time of the thirteenth and nineteenth Yasht the Mes- 
sianic idea is well known, as in the Haptanghaiti the fire of 
purification.and final judgment are recognized. Yet no one 
knows the date of these works, even approximately. They 
have the character of later works, as compared with the 
Gathas, and that is all v/e can say. So we have to rest with 
this statement, that the significant elements of the later 
eschatology are unknown in the Gathas, in which there is 
no Messiah, no assembly of the dead at the last day, and no 
reward and punishment in heaven and hell, only a cosmic 
renewal of the world and the general notion of a resurrec- 
tion. Whether there was a bodily resurrection recognized 
before the time of Pahlavi theology is doubtful. Soeder- 
blom thinks that in the Gathas there is nothing to prove or 
disprove the idea. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the fact 
that Greek authorities of the fourth century b. c. (in all 
probability, Theopompus ap. Plutarch) recognize the Ma- 
gian belief in the cycles, in resurrection, and in purification, 
when " Hades " is overthrown and the more and more 
spirituaHzed world shall become happy in universal felicity. 
This corresponds to the later Avestan idea and seems to 
point to the fact that even the later Avestan views are older 
than our era, though a great deal of the detailed lore of the 
resurrection derives from texts such as the Bundahish, 



4o8 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

which in its present form is as late as the Mohammedan 
conquest of Persia (651 a. d.), and the Bahman Yasht, 
which is as late as the sixth or seventh century. From 
these sources comes the completed Messianic doctrine, with 
its account of the overthrow of Azhi Dahaka by Hushedar 
(Hushedar's millennium begins with the decline of the Sas- 
sanides) and the second millennium of Hushedarmah, which 
is now in progress, culminating in the coming of the sa- 
viour. This element in the new theology made vital 
changes. These were the gradual lessening of the impor- 
tance of the work of the pious worshipper and even of 
Ahura Mazda himself in comparison with the work of 
the saviour. For it is not God but the Saoshyant who raises 
the dead by giving them the elixir of life, the flesh of the 
sacred ox and the Hom juice. He toils for fifty-seven 
years to raise them and they all rise, good and bad, to be 
purified and to seem forty years of age if they died old, 
or fifteen if young; but, according to another version, veg- 
etarians are resurrected young and the eaters of flesh as 
of middle life. Owing to this idea of universal purification 
the old conception of a judgment by burning metal, though 
retained, became superfluous. Ahriman is the only sinner 
destroyed; even the Azhi Dahaka, who eats up Satan, is 
purified at last (Bahman Yasht, 3, 57). The doctrine of 
the Gathas, that piety increases righteousness, is also no 
longer necessary. 

Darmesteter's theory, already criticized, refers Zoroas- 
trianism to Greek and Christian influences. The exaggera- 
tion is here almost as great as that of Mills, who thinks 
that the Avesta is the source of all Jewish belief in regard 
to Satan, the angels, and the last judgment. Philo is said 
to have been the transmitter. The general and particular 
are not sundered at all in Mills' review ; many parallels are 
utterly inept, such as the stress laid on seven, as if this 
number had not been Jewish. Soederblom's work is much 
more critical. He shows,, what is so constantly forgotten, 



RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 409 

that the divergencies are quite as important as the agree- 
ments and holds that, while there may be a general his- 
torical connection between Jews and Iranians, there is no 
such close dependence as is maintained by Mills. The fig- 
ure of Satan and those of the archangels as princes of 
earth and air are very probably of Iranian origin ; while the 
temptation may have been added to Zoroastrianism from 
Christian sources, or, as a Christian story, drawn from Zo- 
roastrianism or, a third possibility, each may have arisen 
independently. There is still a fourth possibility, that both 
western religions were indebted to Buddhism. Unsatisfac- 
tory as is this non-solution, it is at present all that an un- 
biassed historian can accept. The Jewish-Christian Judg- 
ment is not that of Zoroastrianism and the general idea of a 
life hereafter need not be derived at all, or it may have had 
any one of many sources. The universal resurrection, the 
Bridge, the three judges, form no part of the Jewish idea, 
while the Christian " last trump " is not Zoroastrian. In 
a word, " Daniel was Zoroaster " is not historically possible. 
Edouard Meyer's view, that both Persians and Jews drew 
the ideas common to both from Babylon, lacks a basis of 
fact. Where in Babylon is found a Satan or a Wise Spirit i 
opposed to him, or an eschatology like that of the " bor- A 
rowers "? 

Satan is not an early Jewish nor a Babylonian concep- 
tion, but he is a perfect counterpart of Ahriman, who in 
turn grows naturally out of Zoroaster's Lie. The seven 
archangels are inevitable developments of Gathan thought; 
Asmodeus is Aeshma daeva. Most of the differences in 
belief are explicable as due to independent development 
in detail. New Testament thought is a residuum of for- 
eign and native ideas so long combined as to be at this pe- 
riod purely Jewish; in the Apocalypse there might be a 
reflection of Babylonian star-cult, as in the virgin-birth 
and saviour-deity there might be a reflection of Zoroastrian 
mythology. But might is not must and in view of the great 



410 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

uncertainty in regard to the date of later Avestan texts, it is 
probable that we shall never know the exact relation between 
Christian beliefs and Zoroastrian. 

An eclectic mystical combination of Zoroastrianism, Baby- 
lonian belief, and Gnostic Christianity arose in the third 
century a. d. under the name of Manicheism ; it was a 
much needed reform. Mani's chief argument against Zo- 
roastrianism was that it had become too formal. Not sac- 
rifice but prayer and instruction were needed in religious 
life. He would accordingly free the '' light devoured by 
matter." He appeared in 242 a. d. and was executed after 
many years' work in the East.^ Three hundred years later, 
in the sixth century, another sect, that of Mazdak, a disciple 
of Mani, taught a socialistic community of goods, which 
included even the common possession of wives; but other- 
wise it was ascetic, the leader preaching the giving up of 
meat and pleasure. The Mesopotamian Mandaeans (manda 
is gnosis) also showed Persian Gnostic elements, such as 
worshipping the attributes of God. Their scriptures, 
though late, contain much older material. The modern 
Guebers or Ghebers are the "heretics" (Kafirs), as they 
appeared to Mohammedans, that is a general term for Zo- 
roastrian fire-worshippers. Under persecution, a remnant 
of Zoroastrian believers settled in India and are still known 
as Parsis (Persians). They retain the faith, the best prac- 
tices, and the high moral tone of their ancestors. 

But of all the out-growths from Zoroastrianism, that 
which emanated from the cult of Mithra was the most im- 
portant. It was not, however, a direct product of Zoroas- 
trianism. It was rather an exaggeration of a cult which, 
though maintained within the fold, was never really Zo- 
roastrian. Mithra, not even mentioned in the Gathas, ap- 
pears almost equivalent to Ormuzd as early as the tenth 

1 Fragments of Manichaean works have recently been recovered. 
The system was based on dualism and was in full force in western 
Europe in the fourth century. Augustine was at first a Manichaean. 
Mani regarded himself as a reincarnation of Christ and as God 
incarnate. 



RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 4^1 

Yasht. Mithra's cult is really that of the old Persian god 
of light, popularly maintained and mystically interpreted. 
Mithra as the kindly light of heaven, represented, as the 
reviving sun, the beneficent creative power, and as the 
*' spirit of the middle sphere " he became also a mediatorial 
god. The conception differs somewhat even in its earliest 
form from that of the sun-god, who in the Vedas appears 
carried by seven steeds, while Mithra is the light that 
brings the day in a chariot drawn by four horses. Mithra 
is the hght celestial, of day or of night. At night he 
sees with his hundred eyes and hears with his hundred 
ears, so that he becomes the god of truth and compacts. 
But the sun as light of heaven is also Mithra, who gives 
increase in progeny and cattle. As giver,. too, he dispenses 
peace, wisdom, and victory in battle, and in this capacity 
his companion is Verethraghna, genius of victory. Above 
all in giving victory he saves and then as saviour he saves 
the soul from demons dragging it toward hell. In the Per- 
sian religion he is combined (as Sun) with Anahita and 
Ahura Mazda. When his cult spreads to the western world 
he becomes Helios and Anahita becomes Artemis Taurop- 
olis. The Tauroktonos Mithra slays the bull from whose 
blood when sacrified spring wheat and the vine, originally 
the Horn, Pie is represented as born of the Rock, i. e., the 
sky; his birth is seen only by shepherds, who worship 
him. At once he becomes the ally of the sun and slays the 
bull from whom come all useful animals and plants, before 
the birth of man. His devotee receives the blood of the 
bull, in a symbolic rite taken from the Anahita cult, yet 
not to revive physical life but to renew his soul. Mithra- 
ism inherited from Zoroastrianism the general idea of the 
soul's journey, but complicated it with a later theory of 
ascents through seven spheres, each united with a planet. 
Only the initiated could pass from one stage to another, as 
they alone had the magic formula that served as password. 
Mithraism also taught that when the evil of Ahriman has 
destroyed the world, the dead will be raised again and, drink- 



412 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

ing of the blood of the divine bull, will receive immortal 
life, while fire will devour the wicked, Ahriman and all. 

Mithra, as mediator, emanated from God and, as demi- 
urge, fashioned the world over which he watched. He was 
identified with the Logos and his " glory " influenced the 
deification of emperors. He gave the hope of a happy 
resurrection, for he was the purifier and saviour of souls. 
Beginning in Roman times to spread to the West, Mithraism 
reached its highest development in the third century of our 
era. Julian the Apostate favoured it as late as 331-363. 
It lasted till the fifth century. The cult took a deep hold 
upon paganism. It became a solar pantheism in which 
Mithra represented all gods. His worshippers were for a 
long time rivals of the Christians. As Cumont says : " The 
rites they practised offered numerous analogies. . . . They 
purified themselves by baptism; received by a species of 
confirmation the power to combat the spirits of evil ; and 
expected from a Lord's Supper salvation of body and soul." 
In the Mithraic love-feast the Last Supper commemorates 
the end of the god's labours for man (Mithra saved man 
from drought, flood, and fire). Like the Christians, the 
worshippers of Mithra w^ere all "brothers"; they cele- 
brated Dec. 25 as the " birth-day of the Sun," held Sunday 
as a sacred day, and celebrated a sort of communion. Their 
code was strictly ethical. They " regarded asceticism as 
meritorious and counted among their principal virtues absti- 
nence, continence, renunciation, and self-control." Opposed 
to Zoroastrian belief, they had celibates and a Summus 
Pontifex (TertuUian). Their own order did not favour 
female devotees, but they provided an outlet for feminine 
devotion by allying themselves with the worshippers of the 
Magna Mater (Cumont). They had about the same con- 
ception of the destiny of man as had the Christians, admit- 
ting the existence of a Heaven above, the home of saints, 
and a hell of demons under-ground. " They both placed 
a flood near the beginning of history ; they both assigned 
as the source of their traditions a primitive revelation; 



RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 413 

they both beHeved in the immortaHty of the soul, in a 
last judgment, and in a resurrection of the dead, with a final 
conflagration of the universe." In the end the higher ideal 
of Christianity won the day, but only after a momentous 
strife. Mithraism had its ablest opponent in itself. Its 
asceticism was cruel; it was pre-eminently a military cult; 
its shibboleth was not gentleness but courage; it did not 
honour women ; it was weighted with a cumbersome theology 
and liturgy, which failed to attract the western world. 
Above all, in contrast with Christianity, it was unable to 
appeal to history and was inferior in spirituality.^ 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

James Darmesteter, Avestan Texts in Sacred Books of the East, 

iv and xxiii; also Mills, ihid. xxxi. French translation by 

Darmesteter, Paris, 1892. 
E. W. West, Pahlavi Texts (1880) in Sacred Books of the East, 

xviii, xxiv, xxxvii, xlvii. 
A. V. W. Jackson, Zoroaster, The Prophet of Ancient Iran, 

New York, 1899. The best general work on the subject. 
Volumes in the Grundriss der iranischen Philologie, by Geldner 

on the old literature, West on Pahlavi, Jackson on Religion. 
J. H. Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, London, 1913. 
N. Soederblom, La vie future d'apres le Masdeisme, Paris, 1901 ; 

Les Fravashis, Paris, 1899. 
Franz Cumont, Textes et Monuments figures relatifs aiix mys- 

teres de Mithra, Bruxelles, 1899 > ^^^^ Mysteries of Mithra, 

translated by T. J. McCormack, Chicago, 1903. 
Carl Clemen, Primitive Christianity and Its Non-Iewish 

Sources, Edinburgh, 1912. 
A. J. Carnoy, Iranian Mythology^ Boston, 1917. 

1 Zoroastrian influence through the medium of Mithraism is still 
felt in the Freemason-heritage from the Rosicrucians of the Middle 
Ages, who preserved relics of the Mithra-cult. Compare Cumont, 
Textes et Monuments and Mysteries of Mithra, cited below. The 
above is an abstract of the chief points in this authoritative work. 



CHAPTER TWENTY 

THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 

What is known in regard to the " Children of Israel " (i.e., 
Jacob) before the time of David (circa looo b. c.) is pious 
tradition rather than history. The religion of this period 
was at first presumably that of nomads, until the tribes that 
invaded Palestine entered a new economic environment, 
which had already affected the religion of their Semitic 
predecessors and now influenced Israel. The centralizing 
tendencies of court life, beginning with the establishment 
of the kingdom founded by Saul and David, modified the 
form of religion still further. Political disaster then 
brought material humility but spiritual elevation. After 
life had become adjusted to its new conditions, religion be- 
came crystallized in the Law, wherein, however, survived 
much of the past. 

Incidental to the internal development of this religion was 
the effect produced by foreign culture, that of the Eastern 
Semites, the Persians, the Greeks. From the first came 
perhaps some legendary material and a new appreciation of 
legal form. From Persia, certain mythological and escha- 
tological beliefs. From Greece, new cultural and philo- 
sophical ideas. Egyptian influence, except possibly in leg- 
endary material, is not patent, though such influence had al- 
ready existed in Palestine prior to the Israelite invasion. 

The Nomadic Stage : This is reflected in tradition, in- 
ferable from survivals, and is in accordance with analogy. 
Like the Bedouins, the Israelites probably worshipped va- 
rious daimonia, formless powers of evil or good, sometimes 
located but generally vague as to nature and habitat. Sac- 
rificial cult of some sort reverts to this period, for prophetic 

414 



THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 415 

denunciation of sacrifice is not enough to prove its absence 
in the remote past. Probably the tribal god was worshipped 
with a communion-service of blood; possibly several tribes 
had for centuries one god. By analogy we may suppose 
that the priest of the god was a magician, perhaps carrying 
a magician's rod in serpent-shape ; but this would not imply 
(as E. Meyer has supposed) that the god was a serpent.^ 

The god of the Israelites, both of the southern and north- 
ern tribes, was Yahweh, a spirit possibly belonging to many 
Semitic groups, more especially to the Midianites. He was 
the god of this people, and came from Horeb, the country 
of the Midianites. Possibly the later cult was affected by 
that of the moon-god Sin of Haran and Sinai; but this 
depends in part on whether the Sabbath was a later moon- 
festival. It may have been an old Semitic inheritance, a 
day of pacification.^ 

Moses appears to have reunited the tribes after their so- 
journ in Egypt (or Goshen). He may have reintroduced 
them at that time to the god they had once known. The 
exaltation of a tribal god from a spirit is in line with Semitic 
tendencies (compare Chemosh of the Moabites, Melek of 
the Amorites, and more remotely Ashur and Bel). Such 
a god assumes all needed functions for the protection of his 
worshippers.^ 

A pronounced ethical trait is observable in Yahweh wor- 
ship from the beginning, nor is this alien to the general 
Semitic character. As we have seen, it appears at an early 
date among the eastern Semites ; it may have inhered in 
other Semitic gods, later debased by agricultural environ- 

1 For the curative power of the serpent, compare Num. xxi. 6f. 
and the symbol of Aesculapius. 

2 See above, p. 362. Professor Barton, Studies in the History of 
Religions, New York, 1912, p. 203, thinks that Yahweh's primary 
office was that of love and fertility. But it is more probable that he 
was at first a general tribal god, who then acquired from successive 
environments sundry attributes, becoming war-god, storm-god, and 
fertility-god in turn, like Indra in India. 

3 On a possible connexion with Haran and supposed Aramaean 
influence on the Israelites, see Barton, op. cit,, p. 200. 



4l6 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

ment. For, as long as a tribe is a fighting nomadic entity, 
its god reflects the simpler morality of its habitat; but a 
change to agriculture introduces dependence on weather 
rather than on war. The consequent cult of seasons, sun, 
and moon, leads to the sympathetic magic of productivity, 
and this in turn introduces new rites affecting morals and 
religion. Thus the old Babylonian god was a clan-Power 
rather than a natural phenomenon and the old Assyrian god 
was, like Yahweh, a tribal war-god, while the early Phoeni- 
cian and Syrian deities were also tribal (later city) gods 
as Powers or presiding spirits of tribes. The difference 
between Yahweh and Beelzebub is that the former, no 
longer phenomenal, retains his tribal existence as a Power 
akin to the tribe, while the latter is merely the sun as king 
of flies or a power of nature under one aspect. The latter 
is as unmoral as nature ; the former as moral as the best of 
the tribe. 

The people probably worshipped other gods besides Yah- 
weh ; the Calf of Samaria and Golden Calf ^ were effigies 
of agricultural powers rivalling Yahweh at a later stage; 
the serpent was kept till late in the eighth century b. c, long 
after the people were civilized, just as the household gods 
called Teraphim had been preserved as such till David's day 
(Gen. xxxi. 30; i Sam. xix. 13). Their spiritual leaders 
endeavoured vainly to make the Hebrews worship Yahweh 
alone ; but even they had no conception of monotheism, only 
of monolatry.^ 

Various nomadic traits have been assigned to the pre- 
historic Israelites on the ground that Arabs today show such 
traits ; but many of these may as well belong to the second 

1 The two calves of Jeroboam, i Kg. xii. 32, appear to be the 
effigies of the waning and waxing moon, perhaps of Babylonian 
or general Semitic origin. 

2 The serpent in later times was preserved as adjunct of Yahweh 
rather than as a separate god, till a finer religious sense prohibited 
even this manifestation. Its destruction c. 720 b. c. by Hezekiah is 
recorded in 2 Kg. xviii. 4 ("he called it Nehushtan"). A brazen 
serpent of this sort has been found at Gezer. 



THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 41? 

stage, of agriculture. Belief in ghosts, as in other spirits, 
was probably early. ^ These are willing occasionally to help 
men with oracular advice. But on the whole ghosts seek 
blood and wander by night. The Passover, rites of mourn- 
ing, ashes, and hiding, may show a desire to escape the no- 
tice of unfriendly powers. There is no proof of primitive 
Semitic totemism. Tatooing in honour of a god was prac- 
tised in special cases (Ex. xiii. 9; Is. xliv. 5). Taboo is 
shown in the distinction between clean and unclean animals. 
The herem, or vow of destruction, tabooed everything ; hence 
the sin of preserving anything in Jericho (Joshua vii). 
Some think that the notion of unclean animals was brought 
from Egypt with the rite of circumcision. This rite was 
probably part of a tribal initiation-ceremony, afterwards 
performed at an earlier time of life; but it was not a Semitic 
heritage, as it is unknown to the eastern Semites and to the 
Philistines.^ 

The worship of stones, trees, wells, and serpents may 
have been agricultural or nomadic.^ So too of such traits 
as fasting (Neh. ix. i) ; absence of the lex talionis (Gen. iv. 
2^) ; the practice of the Rechabites (Jer. xxxv.) ; the use 
of bitter water as an oracle ; the scape-goat, etc. These are 
primitive, but whether nomadic or not is uncertain.* The 
ark may well have been a survival of nomadic Hfe. It 
served as an oracle and was taboo to the touch ( i Sam. iv- 
vii.). It is said to have contained (meteoric?) stones. The 
ark of Shiloh may have beeen the home of the Lord of 
Shechem, Baal-Berith, afterwards identified with Yahweh. 

1 Food for the dead is recognized in Deut. xxvi. 14 (not implying 
worship). 

2 Compare Ex. iv. 24f . ; Josh. v. 2f . 

3 Such traits especially are referred to " the nomadic stage " 
without sufficient cause. On the sanctity of the stone and tree, 
terebinth, hyssop, cedar, etc., and survivals of wand-oracles (Gen. 
XXX. 37; xxxv. 2f. ; Joshua xxiv. 26; Judg. ix. 6; Ps. li. 7), see the 
old but still excellent work of Carl Boetticher, Der Baunicultus der 
Hellenen, p. 518 (1856). 

* Marti, Religion of the Old Testament, New York, 1907, ch. xi, is 
too ready to dub as nomadic traits possibly later. 



4l8 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Such an ark houses a second presence of a god whose 
home may be afar, a necessary precaution for those fighting 
away from home, and one taken, for example, by the Mex- 
icans. 

All in all, we know little of the nomadic religion of Israel, 
though most of the religious traits mentioned belong to 
this or to the succeeding stage, after Moses had brought 
the Hebrews to Kadesh, south of Palestine. It seems his- 
torically reasonable to believe that Moses, like Mohammed, 
united various tribes and made real an ideal not wholly 
unknown before, in that he gave Israel its jealous protect- 
ing national divinity. Improbable is the theory that David 
as ruler imposed Yahweh on Israel after he had consoli- 
dated the Israelites by conquest.^ 

The question as to the historicity of Moses (not of his 
authorship) raises the same question in regard to the Pa- 
triarchs and other legendary figures of the nomadic past. 
Their religious value remains the same whether they ever 
existed or not, since to the later Israelites they were his- 
torical characters and to us they embody, in any event, 
important historical matter involving religious data, not to 
speak of their value from ethical and literary points of view. 
The purely speculative '' interpretation " of the Patriarchs 
as tribal heroes,^ local gods, or even as natural phenomena 
(this last, however, never deserved consideration), ignores 
traditional values and, apart from that, remains guess-work, 
We may imagine Abraham to have been a parallel to the 
heroes of culture-myths found in other religions or a local 
god; yet the Patriarch, who is said to have come to Pales- 
tine via Haran, may have existed, though it is historically 
likely that he was an idealized hero. But we must at least 
avoid statements too positive and incapable of verification. 
Thus it is only partly true when Loisy declares that the 
Patriarchs never existed, that Moses, Deborah, Gideon, and 

1 Compare Loisy, The Religion of Israel, New York, 1910, p. 31. 

2 For example, Cain as (Cainite) Kenite, the tribe of wanderers. 
Compare Gen. iv. 14-16 (the land of Nod). 



THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 4^9 

Samuel are largely legendary, that Adam, Noah, and the 
traditions of Paradise, the Deluge, and Babel are myths; 
and that it was the Prophets who inspired the law and not 
the law that inspired the Prophets. In this interpretation 
the Mosaic revelation is a theological romance. 

Myth, legend, and history are relative terms. The songs 
of Lamech and of Deborah are perhaps the oldest frag- 
ments in the Bible and the existence of these people, like 
that of Gideon and Samuel, may be accepted as a fact. 
Moses appears to be as historical as Buddha, who, too, has 
been " interpreted " out of existence ; his personality, how- 
ever glorified, was real; it made history because based on 
history. However legendary, such characters ought never 
to be thrown together with the purely imaginary figures of 
world-beginnings, which are probably a common heritage of 
the Semites. The Deluge-story, as already shown (see p. 
35of.) is found in Babylonian tradition and the figure of 
Adam also may have a counterpart in that of Adapa (p. 352). 
Compare also the Babylonian tale of which Professor Bar- 
ton has recently (1917) given an account. Stories of 
primeval monsters are probably heritage rather than loan. 
Finally, that the Prophets inspired the law, depends on the 
definition of law. When we speak of Jewish law, we must 
first explain whether we mean the legal code or law in 
general. There is no doubt whatever that the Prophets 
knew a holy law, probably even many of the minute di- 
rections afterwards codified in the Priestly Code. A code 
is based on law not law on a code. An Israelite code of 
some sort existed by the ninth century b. c. We may safely 
assume that even in their nomadic state the Israelites had 
laws ; and from what we know of primitive people these 
laws were probably in part due to oracular enunciation of 
divine commands. On the other hand, they did not as 
nomads have the code known as the Priestly Code (of the 
Pentateuch), for this arose under agricultural, not nomadic, 
conditions. Very likely the earliest law was that implied by 
Ex. xxxiv, before it was affected by agricultural customs: 



420 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

to have but one god and no images, to observe the Sabbath 
and Passover, not to use leaven, perhaps to sacrifice, or 
redeem, the first-born (this was a Canaanite custom). 
The leaven was taboo because it implied corruption. 

The Israelites made sundry tribes belonging to different 
groups. The group of " Rachel-tribes " is supposed to 
have entered Palestine from the east about 1200 b. c, after 
a sojourn in Egypt. Three other groups of tribes invaded 
the country, of whom the most important were the " Leah- 
tribes " who (including Judah), may have preceded the 
Rachel-tribes by a century or two.^ 

The Israelites who invaded Canaan mingled with the 
earlier population and gradually overcame them, though in 
the process they became assimilated to the Canaanites. 
Under David the Judaean tribes appear to have become 
united into a body politic, the kingdom of David, which 
eventually conquered the earlier kingdom of Israel in the 
north (Samaria). The second stage of religion begins with 
the entry of the Israelite into the fertile land of Palestine, 
whose inhabitants had a more advanced civilization ^ than 
that of Israel and a religion based on agricultural life.^ 

1 The received view is that Samaria and Judaea were occupied by 
tribes driven out of the desert, supposedly by su^h a famine as 
previously, at intervals of half a millennium, had led to the emigra- 
tion of other Semites, later known as Babylonians, Phoenicians, 
Canaanites, etc. This is not history but speculation. The aboriginal 
Semites may have been Africans, who spread into Syria and Arabia ; 
but the immediate ancestors of Babylonians and Hebrews may as 
well derive from the northern hills as from the southern desert. 
The exodus of the Leah and Rachel tribes are ascribed to the time 
of the XVIII and XIX Egyptian dynasties, respectively. 

2 Solomon had to send to Tyre for Hiram the worker in metal. 
The Hebrews had no smith in Samuel's day (i Sam. xiii. 19; i Kg. 
vii). Compare Judg. i. 19; iv. 13, on the use of iron by the Canaan- 
ites in the thirteenth century. 

3 The earlier inhabitants of Palestine were Amorites, who had 
displaced a non-Semitic race, c. 2500 b. c, and remained in possession 
till Hebraic times, though contending with the (Cretan) Philistines 
and Canaanites, who entered the land about 1800 b. c. Palestine 
belonged to Egypt in the fifteenth and thirteenth centuries b. c. 
The Aramaeans (about 1300 b.c.) are spoken of as Palestinians. 



THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 4^1 

This religion of Canaan was practically one with the 
religion of the Phoenicians, that is to say, a religion already 
exposed to the influence of Babylon and Egypt in addition 
to the native Semitic cult, which, like the neighbouring 
Semitic cults, differed from that of the Israelites in sev- 
eral particulars. The chief divinity was Astarte, as mother 
of life; scarcely less popular were Bel and Hadad; Egyp- 
tian and Babylonian gods were worshipped. The Mother 
of Life as giver of produce was most honoured. Chief of 
victims were the first-born and these included children, 
whose bones have been found at many shrines and founda- 
tions. Groves and hills were favourite holy places. Ash- 
eras,^ tree-stumps, and Massebas, stone pillars, anointed 
with oil, typified female and male divinity; originally they 
were themselves divinities, but later they were placed about 
the shrine of local gods. The land has passed from poly- 
demonism and worship of stocks and stones to polytheism, 
but retained the old, more or less understood, with the new. 
Blood sacrifice was here an offering not a communion- 
service. Earth and hewn rock altars (later forbidden, Ex. 
XX. 25 f.) were raised to many gods, but chiefly to the 
mother goddess of fertility. The open rites in her honour 
were naturally based on her functions, so that here, as else- 
where, the more developed moral sense of man was higher 
than the religious practice.^ Conscious excess, not naive 
nature-worship, marked the practice of the cult. The god- 
dess called the " great one " was the chief Phoenician deity 
by 1400 B. c. and this was probably the case in Canaan, as 
in Syria " the goddess " was chief. With her was that 
Adados, who appears as Adonis in Greece and Attis in 

Between 1225 and 1215 b. c. Merneptah, the Pharaoh, exults that 
" Israel is desolated." 

^ Compare the Asher tribe, named from its god, like the tribe 
Gad, named from the god Gad. 

2 Religious conservatism retained rites ordinarily offensive to 
decency, as in Greece and Rome. There is a difference between 
naive practice and religious sophisticated practice. The former is 
not indecent (immoral) at all; the latter is decent only as it is 
religious. 



422 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Asia Minor, usually regarded as personifying spring's brief 
glory slain by the boar (at Byblos), representing , summer 
heat. Sometimes this god is identified with Rimmon (Zech. 
xii. 1 1 ) . At Ascalon close to Canaan the goddess appeared 
with a fish-body (Derketo), still as the deity of productivity 
generally called Astarte, Astoreth, or Atargatis, originally 
a form of Ishtar, whose love for Tammuz is referred to by 
Ezekiel (viii. 14). Antioch and Lebanon, as well as Byblos 
and Cyprus, were seats of the orgiastic cult of these fer- 
tility demons raised to divinities, whose priests and priest- 
esses mutilated themselves in honour of the goddess and 
whose festivals were adopted by the Israelites till the eth- 
ical vigour of their nation suppressed this religious abuse. 
The symbols of the male power were many, bull, ram, boar, 
eagle, as those of the female power were diversified as cow, 
dove, fish, etc. The relation between man and this divine 
power was sometimes that of filial devotion. Pious kings 
and priests call themselves sons, brothers, and beloved of 
Baal; but usually ordinary men are " dogs " (slaves) of the 
Lord. This shows at least a sense of human dependence 
on the divinity. But it must not be supposed that all the 
western Semites were voluptuaries. There were strong 
gods (Molechs) who had to do with laws as well as fer- 
tility. The Moon-cult is here austere. The gods of Tyre 
and Sidon were stern, exacting human sacrifice. Yahweh 
was of this sort, a god of vengeance and fury (Is. Ixiii. 
3-6). The Lord of Phoenicia is a solar fire-god, Sharraph 
(compare Seraph), with six wings (cf. Is. vi. 2). 

Besides these chief figures were worshipped also " Chal- 
dean " gods, sun, moon, stars, and gods of wind, of dance, 
of mercy, and of fortune (Gad), known to Phoenician and 
Canaanite alike. Towns such as Tyre, Sidon, and Tarsus 
had each its city-god, as before the time of cities each tribe 
had its tribal god. So in Judaea every city had its god. 
Sometimes there is a reversion to the primitive demonism 
which ignores sex. Thus in Cyprus an androgynous god 
was worshipped. But usually the demon had become either 



THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 423 

a god or a goddess. Very rarely such a god is known, as 
at Byblos, simply as El, that is a Mighty One, who had no 
shrine, no priest, and no service.^ 

Israel could not live in such an environment without 
modifying its own religion. In Samaria, Baal-worship was 
formally countenanced by Ahab, son of Omri, as a political 
measure. The god Chemosh was recognized under Solo- 
mon in Judaea. Compare Judg. viii. 33 : " As soon as 
Gideon was dead they went after Baalim and made Baal 
Berith their god " ; i Kg. xvi. 3if. :' " Ahab reared an altar 
for Baal in Samaria and made a grove " ; i Kg. xi. 7 : 
" Solomon built a high place for Chemosh of Moab on the 
hill before Jerusalem and for Molech "; and ib. 5 : *' Solo- 
mon went after Astoreth of Sidon and after Milcom (Mo- 
lech) of the Ammonites." ^ Hezekiah suppressed the coun- 
try-shrines in favour of the Temple (2 Kg. xviii.) ; but 
Hezekiah's son Manasseh (seventh century) worshipped a 
host of gods of sky and earth. 

Thus for centuries the worship of Baalim held side by 
side with that of Yahweh and was as popular with Israelite 
as with Canaanite. Moreover, as the peoples merged into 
one body, so the religions merged. Yahweh became god 
not only of the Israelites but of the Canaanites, whose older 
gods he ousted from their shrines, as at Bethel and Shechem. 
Conversely, Canaanite cultus became directed toward Yah- 
weh, who thus became an agricultural deity, and so entered 
into competition with the native gods. In the north there 
was a formal tournament of gods, to see which was the 
better. The priests of Baal danced and cut themselves after 
their manner but in vain, while the fire of Yahweh fell, 

1 Though the various goddesses (and gods) of Ishtar character 
(Astaste, etc.) are not the same divinity, they represent under vari- 
ous forms and names the same idea to the various tribes, that of 
the life-principle, a sex-cult retained till Mohammedan days and 
surviving in the Mihrab and horse-shoe arch. 

2 Chemosh is regarded as a real god (of the Moabites) in Judg. 
xi. 24. His worship was later abolished by Josiah, who also put 
down the cult of sun, moon, planets, and other hosts of heaven (2 
Kg. xxiii; compare Jer. viii. 2). 



424 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

after Elijah had repaired his broken altar. Then the 
spectators of the tournament decided that Yahweh was God 
(i Kg. xviii.). Another contest took place betweeen the 
divine ark and Dagon of the Philistines, a fish-god counter- 
part of Derketo (above; cf. Judg. xvi. 23; i Sam. 5). The 
cart carrying the ark " came into the field of Joshua the 
Bel-Shamite," an indication that the worship of the sun, 
Shamash, was popular.^ This polytheism was not easily 
stamped out. It was really the popular religion of Israel 
until after the Exile. One cannot read the accounts of 
" Israel's adultery " throughout the Old Testament without 
being impressed with the fact that Yahweh's strict wor- 
shippers were only a small group in a great host of idola- 
trous Israelites, who even admitted foreign gods into Yah- 
weh's very tabernacle and were always ready to worship 
Baal. So say even the Jews : " Excepting David, Heze- 
kiah, and Josiah, all the kings of Judah forsook the Law of 
the Most High" (Ecclesiasticus xlix. 4). 

The establishment of a kingdom, first of Israel and then 
of Judah,^ gave to religion the centralization of the court. 
Any head of a family or the head of the tribe might orig- 
inally make a sacrifice. But now priests ^ under the king 
became official sacrificers at a city temple (instead of a 
" high place "), which tended to become the only place of sac- 
rifice. God himself was treated as a king (as a king was 

1 Similar place-names in Palestine reveal the worship of Phoeni- 
cian gods. The horses of Shamash are not recognized till 2 Kg. 
xxiii. II, due to Assyrian influence. 

2 After Saul had been made first king of Israel (i Sam. viii-x. 24 
and 2 Sam. v), David, in the next generation (c. 1000 B.C.), became 
king of Judah and Israel, his capital being old Jebus, a Canaanite 
town, regarded in the Bible as old Salem (Gen. xiv. 18). Here, at 
Jerusalem, Solomon, imitating his neighbours, built the temple David 
piously feared to erect (i Chron. xxii, xxviii. 3). Solomon died 
937 B. c. Under his son Rehoboam ten tribes revolted from Judah. 
Then the city was taken by Shishak, king of Egypt, plundered by 
the Philistines (c. 845 B.C.), and like Israel (842 b. c.) invaded and 
overthrown by the Assyrians (Sargon and Sennacherib, , 722 and 
701 B.C.). 

3 With the Babylonian haruti (diviners) compare the Hebrew 
barim, priests as seers, later inspectors of meat. 



THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 4^5 

almost divine, 2 Sam. xiv. 17). Yahweh had his palatial 
home, became exclusive, was served by a certain class or 
family (of Zadok). Yahweh, who had been especially the 
war-god of the tribe,^ now had his agricultural festivals, 
services, and tribute. The early Book of the Covenant (Ex. 
xix-xxiii.) shows already wholly agricultural conditions. 
The old new-moon feast and those of first fruits, vintage, 
harvest (Feast of Weeks), were simply transferred from 
the Canaanite Bamoth to the altar of Baal Yahweh ; former 
victims of the Baalim became those of Yahweh. The fes- 
tival as a " dance " still retained its force as " dancing be- 
fore the Lord " (Judg. xxi. igf. ; 2 Sam. vi. 16). The new- 
moon feast may have been more feast than religious cere- 
mony (i Sam. XX. 5), but the feast of unleavened bread 
and that of Pentecost (the fiftieth day after the Passover) 
were harvest festivals. 

Thrice a year, at the festivals of First Fruits, of Weeks 
(Harvest), and of the Tabernacle (Vintage), all male 
Israelites came before the Lord with their tribute of fruits 
as gifts. The sacrifice was now one of tribute, as to a king. 
The cultus became the chief religious factor and differen- 
tiated this stage of religion most forcibly from the earlier 
stage. The Canaanite Asheras and Massebas and even the 
foreign Hierodouloi (also -ai) contaminated the Yahweh 
cult. Yet Yahweh himself, as lord of all the land, became 
more revered than any local Baal. The sub-divided Yah- 
weh, indicated by a Yahweh-nissi at Kadesh or a Lord God 
of Sabaoth at Shiloh, never really divided the conception. 
Yahweh still remained one God and withal, despite Canaan- 
ite influence, one moral God, whose worshippers must not 
only sacrifice to him but follow his moral law. A loftier 
conception of God was introduced by the gradual sup- 

1 God of armies, a "man of war" (i Sam. xvii. 45; Ex. xv. 3) ; 
cf. Lord God of Sabaoth, that is of the armed hosts. Hence the 
Prophets say (Amos v. 25; Jer. vii. 22) that Yahweh did not care 
for (agricultural) sacrifices. As war-lord, Yahweh was commem- 
orated in the old Book of the Wars of the Lord. Compare the war- 
cry, Judg. vii. 18, " the sword of the Lord." 



426 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

pression of the local shrines and though Yahweh was still 
god of storm, of rain, of dance, etc., he was so not as a 
phenomenal or departmental god but as the only God, mani- 
festing himself in all phenomena. It is true that the old 
tales, judged by modern standards, do not represent either 
the worshipper or his God as morally perfect. Pharaoh is 
shocked by Abraham's immorality (Gen. xii. lof.). Yah- 
weh himself is deceitful, not to say capricious and cruel. 
There is a lying spirit of God (i Kg. xxii. 2if.) ; God 
deceives cruelly when he persuades men to sacrifice their 
first-born (Ezek. xx. 25f.).i Yet Jeremiah doubts if God 
ever commanded the horrors perpetrated in his name. Jer- 
emiah was right. Such service does not correspond to 
the ideal of Yahweh as a God of mercy. Despite practices 
adopted from the Canaanites and old tales, the God of 
Israel tended ever to become morally supreme over the 
nature-gods of Canaan. In this he reflects the state-con- 
ception of morality as obedience. Yahweh thus delights less 
in sacrifice than in obedience (i Sam. xv. 22). This note 
becomes the theme of the Prophets, the moral successors of 
the Patriarchs, who also lived on speaking terms with God. 
But before their religion is discussed, the literature known 
to them must be examined. 

The early Prophets do not appeal to the Pentateuch ; they 
probably did not know it. But it is probable that they knew 
as authoritative moral lessons the early tales of Genesis. 
The Pentateuch (later referred to Moses) is generally be- 
lieved to be a compilation, the product of various writers 

1 The Tophet-sacrifice was made to Yahweh Molech. Moabite, 
Phoenician, and Israelite all offer to their gods sacrifice of children 
(the foundation-sacrifice, i Kg. xvi. 34; of. 2 Kg. iii. 27). Compare 
2 Kg. xxi-xxiii; Josh. xv. 8; Jer. vii. 31; xix. 2f. The " Tophet in 
the valley of the son of Hinnom," south of Jerusalem was where 
the Canaanites and then the Jews burned their sons and daughters, 
though they burned their sons also on the high-places. Manasseh 
still permitted this, but Josiah aboHshed the practice late in the 
seventh century. Compare Ex. xxii. 29. Hinnom as Ge' Hinnom 
became Gehenna, the mouth of hell, typical of fiery punishment 
hereafter. 



THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 427 

during several centuries, who, however, made use of much 
older legal and legendary material. The early writers of 
the ninth and eighth centuries known as the Yahwist and 
Elohist appear to represent traditions of the tribes of Judah 
and of Israel, respectively. At a much later date (fifth 
century) priestly writers are supposed to have combined 
these earlier writings with their own contributions to what 
is now the Pentateuch, after the Deuteronomic code had 
been established. The Pentateuch as a whole would thus 
be a work composed after the Exile. The difference between 
the early Yahwist and Elohist is partly geographical and 
tribal, partly a difiference of style and method. The Judean 
Yahwist assumes that Yahweh was the name of God from 
the beginning, while the Israelite Elohist assumes that the 
name Yahweh was first revealed to Moses. The northern 
tribes probably adopted the name Yahweh at the time of 
the covenant which was consummated at the sacrifice men- 
tioned in Ex. xxiv. i-ii. There is from this point of view 
no historical contradiction between Elohist and Yahwist. 
Each speaks for his own people in accordance with his na- 
tive tradition.^ 

The distribution of parts, according to the current view, 
roughly outlined, implies that only fragments of the Elo- 
hist's writings are utilized by the later compilers till Gen. xx. 
(the story of Sarah) ; then, belonging to the Elohist, would 
come the stories of Ishmael, of Abraham's covenant, of the 
sacrifice of Isaac and his blessing, of Jacob's dream and his 
service and children (the twelve Patriarchs), of the meeting 
with Esau, and in part the story of Joseph. The (also 
Elohistic) priestly writers three hundred years later (c. 450 
B.C.) wrote the lofty first chapter of Genesis and much 
of the genealogical and legal matter of the Pentateuch, one 
story of the Deluge (the rain-bow covenant, Gen. vi. gi.; 

1 Compare Ex. iii. 1-14 ; vi. 3 ; Gen. xxxv. lof . ; but also the 
Yahwist's statement, Gen. iv. 26. The Patriarchs (it is said in 
Joshua) worshipped "other gods" and did not know the name 
Yahweh. 



428 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

ix. II ), the covenant by circumcision, etc. The Yahwist's 
account (thus divided) is much more naive and picturesque 
than that of the Elohist. To him would belong the stories 
of the temptation and fall (Gen. ii. 5f.), of Cain, of the 
" sons of God," of Isaac and Rebeka, the alternate Deluge- 
story (Gen. vi. 7; vii. if.)/ the story of Babel, of the rape 
of Sarah, of the destruction of Sodom, of Esau's loss of 
birth-right, and parts of the story of Jacob and Joseph. 
In this (Yah wist) material there is implicit an antecedent 
polytheism (Gen. xi. 7), showing that the author used still 
older matter.^ He himself is incHned to a more anthropo- 
morphic conception of God than are the later priestly writ- 
ers. Even the earlier Prophets are, as regards monotheism, 
less advanced than the later Prophets, Ezekiel and the Sec- 
ond Isaiah.^ Yahweh is the Creator only in these later 
writers. As late as the Priestly Code, the Creator is Yah- 
weh rather than Yahweh the Creator.* 

1 Of the two Deluge stories that of the Yahwist is older; it is 
more like the Babylonian story. The priestly writers make the 
flood last a year; the Yahwist, only two months. For parallels to 
the story, see Usener, Die SintUutsage.n, Bonn, 1899. The Hindu 
and (late) Greek stories may have been influenced by the Semitic, 
though there are deluge-stories in many parts of the world. The 
Biblical account may have been based on old material known in 
Palestine before Judah entered it. This is more probable than 
that it was taken direct from Babylon in the eighth century or first 
written after the exile. 

2 This trait as a belief in a plurality of deities, or forms of deity, 
was preserved in Jewish Kabbalism. The Hebrews spoke of God's 
" angel," of his Face, or Word, as an hypostasis of God, but other 
Semites made such hypostases into separate gods. So in Palmyra 
Mal-'ak-Bel, " angel of Bel," is a god. 

3 That is (the Babylonian) Is. xl-lvi {circa 550 B.C.). Some 
assume a later Third Isaiah, Is. Ivi-lxvi {circa 450 B.C.) of Jerusa- 
lem, while the Priestly Code was forming in Babylon. Parts of Is. 
xlii, xlix, 1, Hi are of doubtful origin. 

* It should be noticed, however, that the results of the Higher 
criticism, which, as above, divides the Old Testament stories into 
various sections, are not universally, though generally, accepted. 
Professor Edouard Naville contends that the earliest Biblical texts 
were written in Babylonian cuneiform and the later books in Ara- 
maic. Characteristic words and phrases separating the sections 
would thus be due not to the author (Moses, who wrote the Penta- 
teuch), but to the later translators. This would, for example, re- 



THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 429 

The Elohistic Commandments of Ex. xx. reflect the 
sterner ethical traits of the northern kingdom as compared 
with the rituahstic agricultural environment of Ex. xxxiv. 
In the later decalogue no ritualism remains; Yahweh de- 
mands only ethical purity. This may be accepted as the 
first fruits of northern prophetic reaction against the de- 
based southern cult. It recognizes as the supreme spir- 
itual power a moral God. At the same time it is not yet 
monotheistic ^ and the moral law is external. Thou shalt 
not swear falsely (take God's name in vain), nor commit 
overt sins, murder, theft, adultery, casting the evil eye 
(covet; compare Ecclesiasticus xxxi. [xxxiv.] 13: "God 
hateth the evil eye; evil is the envious eye "). But even in 
the later form there is no commandment of pure thought, 
gentleness, lovingkindness. This inner morality comes later 
to expression. 

Religion of the Prophets: In the magnificent prose epic 
which has come down to us under the name of Samuel we 
are told that the prophet was originally called a seer. The 
two functions are united in Samuel himself, who gives an 
oracle and expounds the superiority of obedience over sac- 
rifice. By enunciating the will of God, which was discov- 
ered by lots or dreams or prophets, the oracle became a 
law-giver. As sickness was a dispensation of spiritual pow- 
ers, the prophet also had to do with medicine. To a certain 
extent he had jurisdiction over litigation. But above all 
else he was a seer, who without intervention of mechanical 
means, lots, ordeals, etc., proclaimed the future as he pro- 
claimed God's will.^ This he did as inspired; he spoke in 

store the unity of the Joseph story, and in general cfverthrow the 
divisions made by the Higher Criticism. The hypothesis has its 
weak side philologically, but merits attention. 

1 Jeremiah, about 600 b. c, first declared that other gods were 
non-existent figments of the imagination. The first commandment 
implies the existence of gods in whom the Hebrews should not put 
their trust (monolatry not monotheism). 

2 Samuel was not a nabi (prophet) but a soothsayer. Previously 
prophets were soothsayers (i Sam. ix. 9). The soothsayer merely 
revealed material matters and spoke by dreams or lots, at any rate 
by " rule of thumb," not by inspiration. 



430 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

ecstasy. Prophetic bands with music and dance Hke mys- 
tics roamed the land in a somewhat orgiastic manner.^ 
Eventua;!^ prophetic fanaticism led to such symbolic per- 
formances as those of Isaiah and Jeremiah, one of whom 
went naked and the other wore a yoke, to show the fate 
of Jerusalem and the necessity of submitting to foreign 
rule, respectively. The prophets were always rather ex- 
citable visionaries who sometimes had to be restrained by 
the police. They were of political importance from the 
beginning. They countenanced the secession after Solo- 
mon's death. In Israel, Elijah quarrelled with King Ahab 
because the king, as ally of Tyre and to defend himself 
against Damascus, had married a Phoenician princess and 
permitted the erection of an altar to Baal Melkart, though 
Yahweh was retained as the national god. Jehu was set 
upon the throne through a military plot supported by Elisha 
and aided by the Rechabite Jonadab ("Jehu destroyed Baal 
out of Israel," 2 Kg. x.).^ 

Isaiah's assertion that Jerusalem could not be destroyed 
(xxxi.) had a lasting effect on Jewish politics. Prophetic 
activity had much to do with breaking up the local shrines, 
as " sin of Dan," " sin of Samaria," etc. In the end this 
concentrated the worship of Yahweh at Jerusalem and con- 
solidated the union of church and state, which led to the 
conception of a national instead of a tribal god. This in 
turn was the first step toward the conception of a world- 
god, who for his own ends could even permit Israel to be 
conquered in order that righteousness might prevail at the 
loss of Israel's prestige. 

Politically the Prophets prevented the growth of Israel. 

1 Loisy goes too far when he says that *' Saul also among the 
prophets" was due to the noise made by Saul (op. cit., ch. iii). 
The text says that he joined the corybantic troop and prophesied 
with them (i Sam. x. lof.). 

2 Elijah goes clad in skins and affects the desert as his home; 
he reverts to the nomadic Yahweh, avoids Jerusalem, and seeks 
Yahweh at Horeb (i Kg. xix), a strong contrast to the courtier 
and politician Elisha. Elijah's worth lies in his insistence on ethics 
versus ritual. 



THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 431 

In an age when an alliance was necessarily religious as well 
as political, they hampered every attempt to enlarge the 
kingdom. Elijah objects as much to the Judaean agricul- 
tural Yahweh as to Melkart. No confederation was pos- 
sible with the neighbours who might have united with Israel 
to defy Assyria so long as the implacable Prophets would 
have no dealings even with their own kin, still less with 
foreigners, who were idolatrous. They accepted political 
defeat as a due punishment. They did not make the mag- 
nificent resolution to sacrifice the state to God, nor did they 
see that their own counsel had been instrumental in making 
a martyr of Israel. But it is probable that if they had 
foreseen they would not have swerved from their path. To 
them righteousness was the supreme issue. The moral and 
spiritual gain was immense. What remained from their 
former condition was still the inspiration, the call to speak 
in God's name, and their speech was always the same from 
that of Elijah and the shepherd Amos to Malachi : " Re- 
nounce the sin of the Baalim; Yahweh demands righteous- 
ness more than sacrifice ; for your sin you suffer." To this 
the later prophet added the hope that the suffering would 
suffice, that Israel would again be great and blessed. The 
keynote of the earliest Prophets is voiced in Elijah's protest 
against the cult ; morality not ritual is Yahweh's demand. 

To the forerunners of the Prophets is due the conception 
of a national God. To the Prophets the world owes the 
first conception of a purely ethical monotheism. For, feel- 
ing their way, they passed from lower to higher imaginings, 
until they raised Yahweh to the position of God. It was 
indeed a new and startling thought that, as a moral Lord, 
Yahweh might forsake his own people and become the God 
of all nations, in the interest of the world's ethical advance. 
Amos the moralist in the middle of the eighth century pro- 
claims that Yahweh is not necessarily bound to Israel (ix. 
7). This Prophet was the first to strike the note of mono- 
theism, though the idea was not formulated till much later. 
Nor was it thought at first that Yahweh's activity embraced 



432 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

all nations (an idea first expressed in Jeremiah and the 
Second Isaiah). The monotheistic ideal did not arise as 
the result of a " narrow exclusiveness," but was implicit in 
the inspired call and grew stronger with each succeeding 
prophet. 

The religion of the Prophets is national-ethical; it prac- 
tically substitutes morality for cult : " I despise your 
feasts, I do not want your sacrificial gifts. I will not hear 
your songs and harps " (Amos v. 2if.). "I desire mercy 
not sacrifice" (Hosea vi. 6) ; "I have no delight in sacri- 
fice ... I cannot endure the feasts of the new and full 
moon" (Is. i. lof). Yet Isaiah recognized the necessity of 
formal worship, only he would have a purified cult. Inci- 
dentally, the Prophets' religion, particularly Isaiah's utter- 
ances, had the effect of converting the previous idea of God 
as national warrior-king or a Baal-Yahweh into that of the 
mysterious Holy One whose tabernacle (temple) was now 
the centre of holiness in a city of God (Jerusalem, the holy, 
hence indestructible; cf. Is. xxxi. 5; 2 Kg. xix.). 

The Prophets broadened religion in two ways. Espe- 
cially Jeremiah made of Yahweh more than a national god 
and at the same time made religion an individual matter; 
setting the individual against the state. Yahweh supports 
the righteous man. The individual, of whatever nation, if 
righteous, is saved by Yahweh, whose mercy is extended to 
all nations. The political outlook doubtless suggested this 
attitude. The material world-power of Assyria is reflected 
in the spiritual world; Yahweh rules Assyria as well as 
Canaan.^ God uses other nations at first as a means of 
punishing Israel, but then with enlarged vision it is seen 
that Yahweh is god of these nations as of Canaan. Amos 
(c. 750) foresees a national disaster; he is a despairing 
prophet of woe. Fifteen years later Hosea, the " prophet 
of love," dares to hope that after this severe affliction at 
the hand of the Assyrian God will show mercy to a puri- 
fied Israel. This is the first vague premonition of a coming 

1 Compare Jer. xvii, 10 and Deutero-Is. xlii. 1-6; xlix. 6; Hi. 10. 



THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 433 

kingdom of God. Isaiah, the prophet of hopeful belief, 
who saw Israel overthrown and dispersed by Sargon of 
Assyria and Sennacherib, believes that a " remnant will 
return," ruled by a blameless king governing all people. 
To him Israelites are not qua Israelites the people of God. 
Jeremiah definitely separated patriotism and religion. He 
and Ezekiel (died circa 572 B.C.), the one in Judaea the 
other in Babylon, taught the futility not of hope but of 
political expectations. Israel must remain, yet not as a state, 
but as a congregation of the Lord. 

A distinction has been made above between the sooth- 
sayer and the prophet, but it must be pointed out also that 
the prophetic vision varies in different periods. The mys- 
ticism of the " howling Dervish " type of dancing, babbling, 
noisy soothsayer is first replaced by the inspiration of Amos 
and other " writing prophets," who feel the call or the hand 
of Yahweh or see a vision,^ and speak in his name, often 
in his very words. The first class is shamanistic; its rep- 
resentatives are supernatural, qua ecstatic, beings, magicians. 
The second class is a band of sober but inspired writers, 
pretending to no powers save the word they speak for God. 
The later Prophets, beginning with Daniel, make a third 
class. They have dreams and in trances see the future 
after a period of fasting. This still later became a mere 
literary form).^ They also speak under angelic dictation 
and at times hide behind the names of older Prophets. 

Jeremiah, the greatest of the Prophets if measured by 
breadth and depth, bridges the gap between prophetic and 
legal religion. His prophetic utterances began only a few 
years before the discovery of the Deuteronomic code. This 
code, based on the Book of the Covenant, contained in Ex. 
xx-xxiii. was dramatically " found " and established as 

1 Compare the vision of Isaiah (vi), but not in consequence of 
a trance, rather as Paul saw his vision. Ezekiel is even forced to 
speak against his will, as if hypnotized. Hosea has no vision at all. 

2 Modern interpreters of prophetic phenomena either stress the 
ecstatic side of prophetic phenomena, or insist that the great proph- 
ets were merely rational and ethical teachers. 



434 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

the law of God under Josiah (621 b. c. compare the story 
in 2 Kg. xxii-xxiii.). It was a valiant attempt to modern- 
ize antiquated law. Thus it prohibited absolutely the for- 
mer *' high places '* and local shrines, permitted by the 
Book of the Covenant. No shrines save that at Jerusalem 
were now recognized. Later, Ezekiel made their priests serv- 
ants of the Temple. Also some older features of the law 
were humanely modified and the cultus was purified, but 
by this code it was now legally established. As Isaiah had 
seen, a religion could not live by righteousness alone ; some 
cult must give it, as the soul, the body necessary for its 
earthly existence. This ceremonial side was over-empha- 
sized by the later post-exilic law, embodied in Exodus, Le- 
viticus, and Numbers. The Law of Holiness (Lev. xvii- 
xxvi.), which was formulated about 500 B.C., probably at 
Babylon, thus became part of the necessary religion. This 
trend ended by making religion itself a question of legal 
technique rather than of inner worth. ^ 

Jeremiah, who did not belong to the Jerusalem priest- 
hood, says that the law was made in vain. He demands 
change of heart not of form. In truth the legal ceremonies 
which annulled the inwardness of religion soon became a 
weariness (Malachi i. 13), while they certainly deadened 
the spirit, though later Jews could still feel this spirit and 

1 From the death of Josiah at Megiddo in 608 b. c. to the estab- 
lishment of the priestly code political circumstances made a potent 
factor in reh'gious development. Jerusalem lay at the mercy of 
Egypt till Nebuchadrezzar in 604 b, c. carried off many of the in- 
habitants of the Holy City, finally burning the Temple (597-586). 
The Exile lasted till 536, when Cyrus permitted some forty thou- 
sand Jews to return, who rebuilt the Temple twenty years later. 
Under Nehemiah (c. 444) the city walls were restored. It was not 
till after this Exile that the Pentateuch was compiled (c. 400 B.C.), 
while the final form of Chronicles and of the prophetic writings may 
not be older than the third century. The Hagiographa, or other 
sacred writings besides the Law, Histories, and the Prophets, are 
post-exilic, in part even of the Greek period (e. g. Zechariah, c. 250 
B.C.; Ruth and Daniel, circa 164 B.C.). To the second century B.C. 
belongs a mass of apocalyptic writing, attributed to Enoch, Baruch, 
Daniel, Solomon, etc. The Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes were 
not accepted as part of the canon till the second century a. d. 



THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 435 

voice it magnificently, as in the Psalms. Yet in general the 
Priestly Code led to the legalism of the Talmud. The code 
was ratified by a formal covenant which was never abro- 
gated. Nobles and priests as well as Nehemiah were sig- 
natories. It was a state document which might well have 
suppressed all further religious development. It is, in fact, 
often said that future centuries added to religion a philo- 
sophic theology and a mass of legal interpretation, but that 
the upward course of the religion stopped in the fifth cen- 
tury B. c.^ It is true that from this time onward theology 
rested on the assumption that Yahweh had gradually re- 
vealed both himself (as Elohim, El Shaddai, and Yahweh) 
and his will, till Moses received the final exposition, and 
that Israel had been assigned by Yahweh a permanent priv- 
ileged position. All change in faith or form now became 
taboo. Prophets became pretentious and were no longer 
tolerated; they gave place to the Scribes, who from the 
fifth century became transmitters of the law. For the mass 
of returned Jews, these scholars preserved a purified reli- 
gion which without them had probably been submerged 
among the still active local cults. Yet the Scribes and 
Rabbis did more than preserve. The Talmud (300 b. c. to 
500 A. D.) shows a constant growth in practical religion, a 
broader outlook, a more modern conception of the relation 
between religious and social life. It is really in the suc- 
ceeding centuries after the Exile that Judaism leads to the 
ideals associated, perhaps too exclusively, with the daughter- 
religion of Christ, which it must not be forgotten began as 
a form of Judaism. 

The Temple at Jerusalem, where alone sacrifice was of- 
fered, was served by a horde of priests (20,000 in later 

1 For the formal covenant, see Neh. x. 29. Ezra, who brought 
the Priestly code from Babylon c. 458 b. c, is recognized as the 
founder of Jewish theology, as Nehemiah (thirteen years later) was 
the founder of the church. Their reform was the logical continua- 
tion of the work of Jeremiah and Ezekiel a century and a half 
earlier. A similar covenant was made when Josiah promulgated 
the law. 



43^ THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

days), hereditary officers, supposed to be descendants of 
Aaron. These in turn were served by the Levites, those 
given to Aaron, divided into twenty-four classes, who 
were merely servants of the priests. The Levites might 
not officiate at the altar nor enter the inner sanctuary, but 
acted as slaughterers of victims, door-keepers, and perform- 
ers of other menial offices. They are supposed to have been 
originally the Jewish priests of the converted local shrines, 
who, when the shrines were discontinued, came to Jerusalem, 
where they were at first authorized to continue their serv- 
ices (Deut. xviii. 6-8). But, being unacceptable to the 
city priests (2 Kg. xxiii. 9), they became mere servants of 
the Temple (Ezek. xliv. 11).^ After Solomon, the Zado- 
kites (i Kg. ii. 27-35; Ezek. xliv. 15) became the only real 
priests, whose name may be preserved as Sadducees. Under 
the High Priest (Zech. iii. 8) were soldiers of the Tem- 
ple, who guarded all the treasure stored therein. The 
priests as a class had the income of the Temple, represented 
by cash, first fruits, a share of sacrifices and bread. Only 
the burnt offerings were entirely consumed and even of 
these the priests took the skins. Meal-offerings, sin-offer- 
ings, guilt-offerings became fees paid to the priest and his 
underling the Levite. This resulted in an enormous in- 
come, since, besides other services, vast multitudes flocked 
to Jerusalem to celebrate the three great festivals, Passover, 
Pentecost, and Feast of the Tabernacles. The priests were 
in fact the plutocracy as well as the aristocracy of Jerusa- 
lem. They formed a sort of caste and had all a Brahman's 
scorn for common Jews. They had nothing to do but per- 
form services and adorn themselves. Religious instruction 
was no part of their duty. 

The customary offering was the burnt-offering, to express 
devotion. The Sin- and Guilt-offerings became flesh for 
the priests to eat, only the fat being consumed. The Peace- 
offering, for temporal blessings or to express gratitude, 

1 According to Num. iii. 6 and xviii. 6 they were appointed by- 
Moses. 



THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 437 

was also a source of income to the priests, as in this case, 
too, only the fat was burned. Besides these three kinds of 
sacrifices were the unbloody sacrifices, of little account; 
they were added to the burnt bloody sacrifices. The daily 
burnt offering was a public sacrifice of an unblemished 
lamb, offered at daybreak and in the afternoon. On high 
festival days and especially on the Day of Atonement there 
was an elaborate ritual. Psalms iii-xli, were composed 
after the Exile for the liturgy ; also instrumental music made 
part of the daily service (2 Chron. xxix. 28). Solomon's 
temple had wooden and metal figures (Cherubim, i Kg. vi- 
vii.) made by Hiram of Tyre; but figures were discontinued 
from the time of Josiah. The later Temple was a great 
structure of cedar and marble, faced with gold plate. It 
had an outer court and a holy place, part of which made 
the Holy of Holies, an empty room entered by the High 
Priest once yearly on the Day of Atonement.^ This Tem- 
ple was destroyed with the city under Titus, 70 A. D. Other 
temples existed outside of Palestine, but only that at Jeru- 
salem was recognized by the nation at large. Toward this 
Temple, the shrine of their God and of their hopes, the 
faithful Jews abroad turned in prayer, as did at first the 
Mohammedans. 

The new Jewish religion, as it may be called in antithesis 
to the pre-exilic Hebraic religion, of the early law and 
Prophets, was centred round the Temple as rebuilt in 516 
B. c. By concentrating the cult it suppressed definitively 
all remnants of clan and family worship, as it substituted 
a formal and limited priesthood for the quondam local min- 
isters. So long as any rock might serve as an altar, any 
father of a family might make sacrifice anywhere. Re- 
strictions at first had to do chiefly with the manner of sac- 
rificing. One must not seethe the kid in its mother's milk ; 
one must not let blood flow from the sacrifice to the ground 

1 The Day of Atonement (Lev. xvi.) was a late addition to the 
cult, though retaining the scape-goat. It was instituted to cleanse 
people and temple of all defilement. For details of the Temple, 
compare Josephus, Wars of the Jews, v. 5, 5. 



43^ THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

(as it would go to the ghost rather than to Yahweh), etc. 
Now, however, all sacrifice was prohibited apart from the 
Temple, where Yahweh was (Hab. ii. 20). The peasant 
who dwelt afar had to sell his victim at home and with 
the proceeds buy another sacrificed at Jerusalem. The 
movable feast adopted from the Canaanite became Yahweh 
celebrations on fixed dates at Jerusalem. Harvest cele- 
brated the " Exodus," the Feast of Weeks celebrated the 
" giving of the law on Sinai." ^ Thus the Jews converted 
nature-feasts into national praise of Yahweh. 

After the Exile, fasting, the rite of circumcision, and the 
observance of the Sabbath attained a prominence unknown 
before. In exile they were the badge of faith; thereafter 
they remained a proof of devotion and a means of salva- 
tion. Isaiah (third?) even says that eunuchs and strangers 
are blessed for keeping the Sabbath (Ivi. 1-8). Ezekiel, 
who may have been the first to substitute a weekly Sabbath 
for the full-moon day, lays especial stress on this formal- 
ity.2 

More important were the changes of belief. From the 
time when the Jews came into close contact with Babylon 
and Persia new spiritual powers became prominent. Every 
nation was now thought to have its guardian angel. Sun- 
dry spirits as ministers had originally served God, some 
of whom were giants or Bene Elohim, *' sons of God " 
(compare the strange old tradition in Gen. vi.). One of 
these sons (Job i. 6) had the office of accusing men of sins. 
As such he became an adversary (Zech. iii. i) and tempted 
men to sin (i Chron. xxi. i), thus appearing as God's 

1 For the dates of the Passover, Mazzoth (beginning of harvest), 
Pentecost (the Feast of Weeks), and of the Tabernacle, see Deut. 
xvi ; Lev. xxiii ; Num. xxviiif. These were already the Great 
Festivals of the Jews. After the fall of the Temple, the three great 
festivals, which began as nature-festivals and were retained as 
pilgrim-feasts, were continued as seasonal celebrations in spring, 
summer, and autumn, but designated as feasts of Freedoms Law, and 
Joy, a generalized interpretation. 

2 Ezek. XX. 12; xxiii. 38 and xlvi. i; compare Jer. xvii. 27. The 
Priestly Code of course derived the Sabbath and circumcision from 
creation and Abraham. 



THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 439 

enemy, in which role he became the post-exilic Satan and 
was identified with the ancient foes of God, such as Chaos, 
Rahab and the Dragon (Is. li. 9), In the older belief, God 
himself creates evil (Is. xlv. 7). The idea of a world- 
power of evil is Persian. Its logical implication in the Sem- 
itic myth of creation finds full and forcible expression in 
the post-exilic apocalypses of the second century b. c. 

Ezekiel especially tells of many spirits, some of whom 
may be Babylonian gods. God is surrounded with a court 
of angels and spirits, in part his " sons," in part half-human 
forms of old nature-powers. Thus the spirits of cloud and 
lightning appear as winged Cherubim, whose office is to 
carry the Lord or otherwise to act as guardians.^ Instead 
of God or a divine hypostasis of God's angel or face, real 
angels, intermediaries, now speak for God to men (Daniel 
and Zechariah). Raphael, Michael, patron of the Jews, 
and Gabriel, warrior and revealer, are of doubtful origin; 
Asmodeus is clearly Persian.^ There are also evil angels 
who inspire false statements or bring disaster (diseases) ; 
but they do so at God's command (I Kg. xxii. ; Ps. Ixxviii. 
49). All these beings reflect the later feeHng that God 
is remote in Heaven. He no longer talks on earth with men 
but deals with them through ministers, as a great king deals 
with his people. 

After the Exile also the state became a theocracy. All 
power was in the hands of the priests. The High Priest 
was virtually a ruler, as the Maccabean ruler (of priestly 

^The Cherub is thought by some scholars to have been the 
Hittite griffin. But he seems to be only the anthropomorphized 
form of storm-cloud and lightning. In Heaven and in the Temple 
Yahweh is upheld by a Cherub or Cherubim-car (Ps. xviii. gi.; civ. 
3-4). Cf. Gen. iii. 27. The Cherub is later differentiated from the 
Seraph : " The Cherub knows more ; the Seraph loves more." 

2 The seven archangels described in Enoch (xx) are: Raphael 
as lord of spirits of men, Michael (as above), Gabriel as lord of 
Paradise, serpents, and Cherubim, Uriel " over the world and Tar- 
tarus," Raquel who "takes vengeance on the luminaries" (i. e. 
planetary spirits), Saraqael who is "over spirits that sin spiritually," 
and Remiel, "over those who rise." Azazel (ib. x) sinned through 
teaching men the use of arms and other mysteries of heaven. 



440 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

family) actually became qua ruler the High Priest. There 
was, however, no attempt to imitate the royal freedom of 
Solomon. Monogamy became Jewish law. 

Intercourse with the Greeks began in the fourth century 
B. c. From 320 to 198 b. c. Palestine was under Egyptian 
rule, thereafter under that of Syria, till Rome became her 
master (63 B.C.). Meantime Jev/ish colonies had spread 
westward as well as eastward and Alexandria had become 
the centre of the dispersed, who built temples elsewhere, 
though remaining tributary to the Temple. Hebrew was 
retained as a holy language, but it was popularly ousted by 
Aramaic ; Greek became a second biblical language. Greek 
writings like the Wisdom of Solomon enriched Jewish liter- 
ature; the Torah was translated into Greek in the third 
century. The Septuagint (seventy scholars translated it?) 
became the book of the dispersed Jews (c. 250 b. c), till its 
adoption by Christians caused Jews to repudiate it. 

This Hellenistic Judaism lost none of its native com- 
placency. It claimed all the world's wisdom as originally 
its own. The Jews said the Greeks had learned all they 
knew from Moses. A mass of apocryphal literature sup- 
ported the unblushing propaganda and did much to make 
the Jews disliked abroad, where their exclusiveness also 
made them unpopular.^ In mediaeval Europe the legend 
of philosophy being derived from Moses still sanctioned 
the philosophic interpretation of religion after orthodox 
Christianity closed the Greek schools in 529 a. d. 

Greece gave her philosophy to the Jews. Thence came 
the idea of divine Wisdom and of God as working through 
Powers and Ideas. This the transcendent God of Israel, 
who by a word or by brooding created an orderly world out 
of chaotic matter, never did, though the later angels of 
Persia helped to make familiar the idea of intermediaries. 

1 In Alexandria they claimed the privilege of living apart in a 
quarter of their own, that they might not be contaminated by the 
natives. The natives did not like this and rejoiced to kill them when 
permitted to do so. 



THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 44^ 

Philo, about the time of the Christian era, is " Judaeus," 
but more Greek than Jew. Yet his Neo-Platonism had more 
effect upon Christianity than upon Judaeism, which, withal 
rather late, as already explained, does attain to the idea of 
a creative universal God, but rests more contentedly in the 
thought of Yahweh as patron deity of the Jews, ever inter- 
vening directly in their behalf ; as he directly (without Logos 
or dynameis) created heaven and earth. This is a concep- 
tion suited to the concrete thought, averse from abstrac- 
tions, characteristic of all Semites, from Moses to Mo- 
hammed. The newer conceptions appealed only to those 
Jews who had been imbued with Hellenistic thought. 

The most important of these newer ideas, however, was 
native. Hosea in the eighth century foresaw a future 
reconciliation between Yahweh and Israel; Isaiah looked 
for a reign of justice;^ Jeremiah imagined a saving rem- 
nant under a son of David ; Ezekiel pictured religious Jews 
living round the Temple untroubled by Gentiles; and Deu- 
tero-Isaiah even included the Gentiles as partakers of this 
felicity. Finally Zechariah (ix. 9-10) or perhaps a Deu- 
tero-Zechariah, describes the Messianic king. The advent 
of this Messiah, at first near, in seventy years, is postponed, 
for seven times seventy years, as he fails to appear. He is 
not at first divine, but a king, yet endowed with superhuman 
attributes; then he becomes the "heavenly man" (Ps. of 
Solomon and Enoch, 125 b. c.) There will be a great strug- 
gle with evil, an idea strengthened by apocalyptic writers 
who drew on Babylonian myths. Then the Messiah will 
bring earthly prosperity. As such, he was expected till the 
time of Hadrian, when Bar Cocheba appeared in this role 
and was accepted as Messiah by the Jewish priesthood. 

'■ Isaiah's visions date from 735 to 691 b. c. On pre-exilic Messianic 
hope, see Barton Journal of Biblical Literature, xxxiii. 68f. Marti, 
op. cit., p. 214, gives a list of Messianic passages supposed to have 
been inserted into the prophetic documents (Amos ix. 13-15; Hosea 
ii. 23; Micah iv. 4; Is. ix. 2-6; etc.). There seems to be no cogent 
reason, however, for supposing that the Messiah idea is wholly 
post-exilic. Is. xlv. i regards Cyrus as the anointed Messiah, who 
is to save Israel. 



442 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Hope of happiness hereafter for the people was grad- 
ually united with the hope of individual happiness after 
death. Like other Semites, the old Hebrews believed 
vaguely in a future life, not for the soul or breath of God, 
which at death returned to its source, but for the animal 
life which lingers in the grave, Sheol, and is not without 
intelligence, as is shown when Samuel as a power, elohim, 
rises oracularly from the grave. The Lord bringeth down 
to Sheol and bringeth up (i Sam. ii. 6). Yet ghosts were 
really outside of God's dominion and to attribute an immor- 
tal soul to a man would have been thought as impious as 
absurd. Only those really lived hereafter who by God's 
special favour were caught up and carried away bodily, 
like Moses, Elijah, and Enoch. Men in general had no 
bodily resurrection and no spiritual hope beyond the grave. 
Peace in the tomb, where the ghost lived as a shade, was all 
a man expected. " Shall a man deliver his soul from the 
hand of the grave?" asks a Psalmist (Ixxxix. 48). "In 
death," says another, " there is no remembrance of God " 
(Ps. vi. 5; cf. Is. xiv. gi.; Ezek. xxxii; 22f.). 

But the Zoroastrian idea, that those soldiers of God who 
sleep in the dust shall awake to share in the happiness of 
the purified world, was one to appeal to the Jew who had 
learned to look for the coming of a Messiah. In the second 
century b. c. (Daniel xii. 1-3) this thought is expressed in 
a modified form, " some shall awake." Yet the idea of a 
resurrection was never thoroughly Jewish. The soul itself 
as a psyche may have been taken from Greece. The Jewish 
priesthood, represented by the Sadducees, rejected the resur- 
rection, as did the Samaritans, and it is absent from the 
genuinely Jewish thought found in Tobit, Baruch (disciple 
of Jeremiah), and the Maccabees. It was a belief adopted 
by the Pharisees, possibly, as already explained from Zoro- 
astrianism. For neither universal resurrection nor a final 
judgment belonged to early Israelitish belief. Ezekiel's 
eschatology (xxxvii. iif.) was built upon the new idea of 
resurrection ; even later was the belief that man had an 



THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 443 

immortal soul.^ The Sadducean belief of the second cen- 
tury B. c, as voiced by Ben Sira, is that the dead " has no 
hope " (xxxviii. 21). 

The later religion under Persian and Greek influence 
brought forth its optimists and pessimists, Job, c. 400 b. c, 
and Ecclesiastes, c. 200 b. c. ; also a philosophy of life 
neither strongly optimistic nor pessimistic, the Wisdom of 
Solomon and of Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus, c. 180.^ In- 
creasing individuality, as well as freedom from the law 
(as in Job), marked the progress of this phase of religion, 
which is voiced in many of the late Psalms.^ With the 
advent of a State whose head pretended to be also High 
Priest (second century b. c), the church itself became mili- 
tant and began to suffer from the strife of contending 
parties, whose differences were partly political and partly 
religious. 

The first division of the church, however, occurred earlier, 
perhaps in the fifth century. Ezra and Nehemiah had rec- 
ommended that true Israelites should repudiate their for- 
eign wives. This did not please the Samaritans, who seceded 
from the Temple and took as their sanctuary Shechem 
(Mount Gerizim). These protestants accepted neither the 
canonicity of the Prophets nor the Hagiographa and, as 
just stated, they rejected the novel doctrine of the resur- 

1 Compare Is. xxvi. 19; xiv. gi.; Job xix. 25! Sheol in Job iii. 
17 is a place where the weary may rest. Ps. Ixxiii. 24 speaks of 
man being received into heaven in glory and ib. xlix. 15, xvi. lof., 
xvii. 15 express belief in a bodily resurrection. Daniel (he. cit.) 
speaks of eternal shame as the lot of sinners; (Trito-) Isaiah de- 
scribes the fate of the damned^ whose worm dieth not and whose 
fire is not quenched (Ixvi. 23f.). Later Judaism accepted the idea 
of a purgatory but in general it spiritualized the life hereafter, 
though retaining belief in the Judgment. 

2 Here first appears a discussion of the problem of free will. 
Ben Sira xv emphatically rejects the idea of determinism. Texts 
of the OT support both views, for the early Hebrews had not yet 
raised the question. 

3 The Psalter for liturgical use consists of iii-xli, to which were 
later added the books xlii-lxxiii and Ixxxiv-lxxxix, the latter sup- 
posed to express patriotic enthusiasm incidental to Persian tyranny 
in the fourth century b. c. 



444 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

rection. Their temple, destroyed in 120 b. c, may have 
been erected by that rival of Nehemiah, Sanballat, whose 
son-in-law had been ejected from the Temple (Neh. xiii. 
2S). Samaria had long before been depopulated by As- 
syria and probably in the fifth century the Samaritans were 
not pure Israelites. They represented a ritualistic mono- 
theism and regarded as canonical only the hexateuch; but 
their " Joshua " is not that of the Bible. 

The inner strife at Jerusalem was based on tendencies 
long operative but not productive of classes officially recog- 
nized till they became incorporate in the persons of the 
Sadducees and Pharisees, whom with the Essenes Josephus 
calls the " three philosophical sects '* of the Jews. The 
Sadducees were the priestly aristocratic party, composed, 
however, of diplomats and soldiers as well as of priests. 
They represented political ambition and foreign ways but 
not ideas. The Pharisees were a comparatively small body 
of " separatist " Puritans, successors of those called Assi- 
deans or Holy Ones, who were indifferent to the success of 
State politics but intent on the operation of rehgious require- 
ments. Like all purists they looked with scorn on the 
common people as unclean (John vii. 49). They were, as 
regards ideas, liberal, though respected more as religious 
guides than as national leaders. They were a party not a 
class, while the Sadducees were a class rather than a party. 
The first actual rupture between Sadducees and Pharisees 
occurred toward the end of the reign of John Hyrcanus in 
the second century b. c, when the Pharisees as strict legal- 
ists opposed the Asmoneans because the Maccabees assumed 
(illegally) the high priesthood. To understand the dispute 
it will be necessary to recall the history of the Jews imme- 
diately preceding. 

In 168 B. c. Antiochus Epiphanes of Syria had insulted 
and outraged the Jews, even going so far as to dedicate the 
Temple at Jerusalem to Zeus. Judas Maccabee, the son 
of the Asmonean Matathias, carried out a successful revolt 
and after three years the Temple was purified and services 



THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 445 

were renewed (first Feast of the Temple, 165 B.C.)- The 
Pious Ones of that day, though devoted to their deliverer, 
were satisfied with religious freedom. But Judas and his 
friends (represented by the aristocracy or Sadducees) con- 
tinued the struggle,^ getting Roman help. Judas was suc- 
ceeded by his brother Jonathan (161-142 b. c.) and the 
latter by Simon (142-135), whose son John Hyrcanus (135- 
105) was an object of suspicion to the Pharisees, pietists 
more than patriots, because he paid attention to the good 
of the State rather than to the good of religion. The Sad- 
ducees, on the other hand, supported John and after much 
trouble including murders and civil war the Pharisees lost 
their power and the Romans annexed Judaea (63 b. c.).* 
Herod the Great, who was more a Greek politician than 
king of the Jews, supported the Sadducees and was opposed 
by the purists. Yet the religious conscience of the people 
was prevailingly Pharisaical and in the end the Sadducees 
and Maccabees lost ground while the spirit of the Pharisees 
steadily gained. They were less conservative than the Sad- 
ducees, who denied the non-legal doctrine of the resurrec- 
tion and the popular belief in angels and evil spirits, while 
the Pharisees had adopted all these novelties (Acts xxiii.). 
Josephus, a doubtful authority, says that the Sadducees de- 
nied the influence of Fate, to which the Pharisees allotted 
some activity. 

1 The Sadducees hoped to restore David's kingdom by force of 
arms; the Pharisees looked for the advent of a heavenly Messiah 
and did not favour the introduction of foreign power into Judaea. 
The Maccabees revolted as Jews against Syrian power but when 
they had established their own kingdom they tried to maintain it 
by foreign aid. Hence the Pharisees at first sided with the Macca- 
bees and then renounced them. Jewish expectations during the 
Maccabean revolt are voiced by Daniel and Ps. xc-cl, representing 
the beginning and end of the revolt. 

2 On this date, 63-64 b. c, Jerusalem was captured by Pompey, 
who dared to enter the Holy of Holies. The Maccabean monarchy 
ended with the accession of Herod, 40 b. c. Herod rebuilt the 
Temple (20 b. c), but he slew those who cut down the gold eagles 
with which he had defiled it. He also built a temple to Apollo and 
in other ways showed that he had no sympathy with Jewish ideas. 



44^ THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

The Essenes, the third sect mentioned by Josephus, 
formed a communistic reUgious order, chiefly ceHbate, de- 
voted to rules of peace and purity. They Hved in monastic 
settlements and are referred to as early as 150 b. c. They 
resembled the nomadic Rechabites, except in being agricul- 
turists, but their principles were those of an exaggerated 
Pharisaism tinged with Greek philosophy (they believed in 
"a pure spirit, immortal, but imprisoned in the body*'). 
They had, however, their own scriptures and different 
classes of initiates. They scorned the Temple, but hon- 
oured Moses, and observed the Sabbath very strictly. They 
fled the world, and did not proselytize. They were prob- 
ably mystics but of what sort we cannot tell. Oaths, except 
their initiation-oath, they abhorred and taught the blessing 
of poverty.^ 

The controlling power in the later Jewish government was 
in the hands of a senate, Gerousia, afterwards called the 
Sanhedrin, a council headed by the High Priest. After 
the destruction of Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin met at Jabneh 
or Jabneel (Jamnia). It is first mentioned in the time of 
Antiochus the Great (223-187 b. c). This board had con- 
trol over all the local councils; it gave legal decisions and 
made administrative regulations. It also had spiritual pow- 
ers and had jurisdiction in cases of blasphemy and other 
transgressions. In its guard was the oral law, which, ac- 
cording to tradition, was instituted by Moses and passed 
on by Joshua. It is this oral law, transmitted by Scribes 
and Pharisees, which was represented at the time of the 
Christian era by the schools of Hillel and Shammai, later 

1 See Josephus, Wars, ii. ch. 8 ; also W. D. Morrison, The Jews 
under Roman Rule, London, i8go, p. 346. The Essenes show no 
trace of Persian or Buddhist origin nor, apparently, did they influ- 
ence Christian reHgion. Other Jewish sects are chiefly of late 
growth, such as the mediaeval Karaites (eighth century a. D.) who 
opposed tradition, reverted to Essene and Sadducean principles, and 
adopted from the Mohammedans the allegorical method of interpre- 
tation ; and the Dorsitheans, who were a sect of earlier origin con- 
nected with the Samaritans and active in the second century a. d. 
Another sect called the Falashas were also a late Abyssinian growth. 



THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 447 

by Gamaliel, and was finally committed to the Talmud.^ 
The institution which more than anything else held the 
Jews together during the Exile and after the destruction of 
the city and Temple was the Synagogue. It was a house 
for prayer and edification erected anywhere, usually near 
water for ablution, and was preserved and exalted by the 
Scribes. Like the Temple, it was lighted by a perpetual 
lamp, but its other furnishing was merely a reading-desk 
and a chest of law-scrolls. Its head was the archisyna- 
gogos or Ruler of the Synagogue, usually a Scribe. Open 
daily or at least thrice a week, it served as a meeting-house 
of prayer, where the Scriptures were read and a sort of 
creed (" Hear, O Israel," etc., the Shema, Deut. vi. 4f.) 
was recited, followed by a lesson from the Pentateuch, 
which was thus read through every three years. Seven 
men conducted the service. Hebrew was translated into 
Aramaic, to be " understanded of the people." The Proph- 
ets, as less sacred than the Law,^ were read next and this 
lection was followed by a lay sermon, at which point the 
audience might discuss or dispute any point. A benedic- 
tion pronounced by a priest closed the meeting, which was 
evidently the model of the later Christian church service. 

This service kept the Jews in touch with the vital truths 
of their religion and gave them when dispersed a sense of 
religious fellowship. They learned in the Synagogue the 
binding rules and traditional sayings (Halaka and Agada) 
which, built up into a mass of edifying erudition, unveiled 
all mysteries, explained tradition, and became the volume 
of legendary lore called the Midrash, as opposed to the 
legal lore preserved in the Doctrine or Talmud. The Tal- 
mud is divided into the Hebrew Mishnah and Aramaic 
Gemara, that is, repetition (instruction) and exposition, re- 

1 The two schools of Hillel and Shammai represented liberal and 
conservative elements, respectively. In general the former accepted 
and the latter opposed Hellenism. 

2 The Jews generally regarded the Law as more sacred than other 
Scriptures. But by the time of the Christian era Old Testament 
writings are cited (by Christ and Paul) as if equally authoritative. 



448 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

spectively. The former began with the Scribes and was 
continued by the Tenaim or doctors in the second century 
B. c. Their writings were codified about two hundred A. d., 
while the codification of the Gemara of the Amoraim or 
Speakers was not made, for the Jerusalem Talmud, till the 
fourth century and not till the fifth or sixth century for the 
Babylonian Talmud — a huge work in sixty-three tracts, 
treating of agriculture, festivals, women, civil and criminal 
laws (" damages "), sacrifices, and purifications. The Geo- 
nim or Rabbinical teachers of Babylon and Egypt continued 
to fix tradition till the tenth century a. d. Thereafter tra- 
dition passed into the hands of European Talmudic com- 
mentators, such as Solomon Bar Isaac of France and 
Abraham Ibn Ezra of Spain, in the eleventh and twelfth 
centuries, respectively. In the eleventh century, Isaac of 
Fez (Alfasi) wrote a guide to Talmudic law and in 1180 
Maimonides ^ published the Jewish code called the Strong 
Hand. Finally, in the sixteenth century, Joseph Caro com- 
piled and arranged the whole law under which orthodox 
Jews still live. 

In regard to the authority of Talmudic tradition, it was 
accepted by all except the Karaites, who held as authorita- 
tive only the words of the Bible. Unauthorized beliefs were 
held nevertheless by the later Jews. Thus in the ninth cen- 
tury a number of Jews believed in metempsychosis. Mys- 
ticism came strongly to the fore as a reaction against the 
legalistic attitude of Maimonides and is a marked feature 
of mediaeval Judaism. Its roots may be found in early 
Jewish sects or still earlier in the men who walked with 
God and spoke in his name. Yet on the whole mysticism 
of the rapt ecstatic sort was not Jewish, as it was not Semi- 
tic. It tended both in Hebrew and Mohammedan forms to 
become a mere juggling with letters or magic. 

Religion as Law has been the prevailing Jewish concep- 

1 This Moses Maimonides was called the " second Moses." A 
" third Moses " was Mendelssohn, who in the eighteenth century 
was instrumental in emancipating the Jews. 



THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 449 

tion of religion since the day of Bar Cocheba in the second 
century a. d. Yet the Law is but the formal expression of 
what was conceived as answering to divine requirements. 
The basis of the law has always been the belief in the na- 
tional God and the practice of devotion, sobriety, charity, 
and domestic purity. Mysticism has rarely degenerated 
into sensuality and such emotional licentiousness as arose 
among the Chassidists of the eighteenth century was op- 
posed by the Talmudists. Mediaeval Judaism had its poets 
and philosophers, such as the poet Ibn Ezra of the eleventh 
and twelfth century and the philosophers Saadia of Sura 
and Gabirol of Spain ; but the latter cannot be said to have 
originated new philosophies. Gabirol was the most original 
mediaeval Jewish philosopher, but his Fons Vitae is based 
on Neo-Platonic ideas.^ Till the tenth century Babylonia 
remained the seat of Jewish culture. In Europe, Moham- 
medan thought, as well as Greek, formed the basis of Jew- 
ish philosophy. These philosophers, however, are impor- 
tant as their works affected Christian philosophy. Thus 
Thomas Aquinas is affected by Maimonides, who reverts to 
Ibn Daud, who in turn is chiefly concerned with harmon- 
izing Aristotle and Moses. Later mediaeval Judaism re- 
nounced philosophy and reverted to Kabbalah mysticism.^ 

Judaism has never been dogmatic; its chief dogma is to 
have no dogma ; no creed-test excommunicates. Hillel said : 
" Do not to another what thou thyself hatest ; this is the 
chief law." Dogma as a test of membership in the church 
was attempted by the Karaites and by Maimonides, but the 

1 He was a mystic and regarded God's will as mediating between 
God and the world as a sort of Logos; hence he was even called 
a *' Christian Jew." 

2 Kabbalah, " tradition," is in general a theosophic mysticism, in 
part Neo-Platonic, perhaps referred to as early as Ben Sira in the 
second century b, c, and known to Gnostic writers. It became 
popular in Europe after the tenth century. It teaches metempsy- 
chosis and makes God, as " dwelling-place of the universe," create 
by wisdom and become manifest through wisdom, insight, power, 
etc. See, for example, B. Pick, The Cabala, Chicago, 1913, and the 
Jewish Encyclopedia s. v. 



450 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

test was never confirmed by authority. Generally, however, 
as proof of orthodoxy, is accepted belief in God, revela- 
tion, and Judgment. Modern attempts to formulate dogma 
add behef in God's immanence, in man's immortality and 
responsibility. Atonement is made by fasting, prayer 
(praise and petition), charity, and purification. Modem 
Jews celebrate the first day of the seventh month (New 
Year's Day) as the beginning of a penitential period end- 
ing with the Day of Atonement. The Purim has become a 
day of charity or a childish celebration, innocently re- 
placing the original parallel of a Saturnalia.^ Another cele- 
bration originally of the Maccabees and called a feast of 
lights, Hannukkah or Chanuka, is now interpreted as a feast 
of enlightenment. 

Zionism is a form of Messianic hope with the Messiah 
left out ; it is a late effort to return to Palestine and appeals 
to the conservatives. Liberal Jews interpret Judaism as a 
means of enlightening the world. They follow the hint 
of the later prophets that the people of Israel is the Mes- 
sianic Son of God. They have modernized the rehgious 
service and rejected as unessential many ceremonial laws. 

In reviewing Jewish religion one cannot fail to be struck 
with the contrast between it and other Semitic as well as 
non-Semitic religions. Judaism refined not only old laws 
and legends of the Semites but it refined itself. Patriarchal 
improprieties, for example, were retold ethically by the 
priests, who preferred expurgated and hence instructive 
narrative to shameless accuracy. Monotheism was not 
enough; it must be united with morality. Thus a domi- 
nantly ethical strain appears throughout the religion, both 
in its legal and prophetic expression. On the whole the 
religion is civic rather than individualistic. It is clannish 
and in this regard resembles that of the early Greeks. Kin- 

^ At the Purim the usually abstemious Jews might intoxicate 
themselves and play at masquerades. It celebrated the destruction 
of Haman and the deliverance of the Jews through Esther (Ishtar?) 
and Mordecai (Marduk?), that is, a late travesty of the Babylonian 
myth, according to Noldeke. See above, p. 362. 



THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 45 ^ 

ship with the deity and clan-morality characterize both.^ 
Judaism is a bridge leading directly to Christianity. 
If the last aspiration of the Jew was '' Thy kingdom come " 
in Palestine, it was also able to embrace all nations in its 
purview. Moreover its God was not only a judge but a 
God of loving-kindness, not only a king but a Father in 
Heaven: "Call me Father; I am merciful" (Jer. iii. 19; 
ix. 24; xxxi. 9). Hence this religion also is one of love 
as well as of fear (" Love the Lord — fear the Lord," Ps. 
xxxi. 23 ; xxxiv. 9 ; cf . xci. 14) . Finally, Judaism is not 
one-sided; it is a religion of fear but also of joy, not only 
of joy in the Lord iDut of cheerfulness. "Do not worry; 
joy in the heart is life to a man," says Ecclesiasticus. Puri- 
tanic in the meticulous observance of religious rules, the 
Pharisaic side was offset by Sadducean hatred of gloom. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

S. A. Cook, Religion of Ancient Palestine, Chicago, 1908. 
Karl Marti, The Religion of the Old Testament, New York, 

1907. 
Alfred Loisy, The Religion of Israel, New York, 1910. 
J. P. Peters, The Religion of the Hebrews, New York, 1914. 
A. Kuenen, The Religion of Israel, London, 1874. 
R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old 

Testament, Cambridge, 19 13. 
W. Bousset, Die Religion des ludenthums im neutestamentlichen 

Zeitalter, 2nd ed., Berlin, 1906. 
Isaac Husik, A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy, New 

York, 1916. 

1 In Greece marriage was a religious sacrament and the laws 
concerning homicide have a religious basis. In Greece also divine 
vengeance and mercy are united, and the divine nature is held up 
as a model for man. 



CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 

THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM 

As in the case of all " founders' religions," we have to dis- 
tinguish in Mohammedanism between the personal faith 
of the founder and the beliefs of the later body of the 
faithful. Mohammed was the logical and historical suc- 
cessor of the old prophets of Israel, fie believed that he 
was carrying on their work; that God had appointed him 
as an apostle to the Arabs, as the Hebrew prophets had 
been chosen to reveal God to their people. And in truth, 
since Mohammed's God was the God of the Hebrews, it is 
difficult to see why one should hesitate to recognize in Allah 
the same Deity as in Yahweh, attend a mosque as a church 
of God, or accept Mohammed as the prophet through whom 
at least his people were led to God. 

The Koran of Mohammed, " the Praised," is, in the be- 
lief of himself and his followers, the word of God trans- 
mitted to the Prophet by Gabriel. It was revealed at a 
time when the Arabs needed correction and when the Jews 
and Christians of Arabia were imbued with the same super- 
stitions as were the Arabs. Previous to the birth of Mo- 
hammed, 750 A. D., the religion of the Arabs had been a 
mixture of primitive nature-worship and corrupt Babylo- 
nian star-cult. The chief objects of devotion were Jinns 
(spirits of the mountains and desert), and tribal deities. 
Some tribes worshipped the female deity, AUat ; the acacia 
tree was a form of the love-goddess ; Zaf a and Marwa were 
mountains holy in themselves and having holy images ; holy 
also was the Black Stone in the wall of the Kaabah, which 
afterwards became the chief shrine of Mohammedanism. 
But Allah, " the god," was already recognized by more 
Ahan one of the tribes as " God most high," but beside him 
• 452 



THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED 453 

were set gods in human and animal form, and the worship 
of sacred stones and trees was general. Mohammed re- 
tained in his own religion the belief in Jinns, in predestina- 
tion and fatalism. Mecca, '' the synagogue," built about 
450 A. D. around the Kaabah, and long before held sacred, re- 
mained to the Prophet also a holy city. 

The race from which Mohammed sprang was character- 
ized by strength, both in vice and virtue. It was brave, 
hospitable, clannish, haughty, poetical; it was given to rob- 
bery, murder, and lust; it was cruel and superstitious; its 
governing power lay in the hands of the boldest; wealth 
and bravery made a man chief both in politics and in reli- 
gion. In Mohammed's own case, according to tradition, 
the religious chieftainship of Mecca, which had been in his 
family, had been lost through poverty. At the age of 
twenty-five he married a rich widow fifteen years his senior. 
Visions inspired him to believe himself (at the age of forty) 
a prophet, sent to Arabs as of old Abraham or Jesus had been 
sent — to each folk its own prophet. Mohammed's first 
converts were a few of his own family and familiars, women, 
slaves, his cousin Ali, a merchant, Abu Bakr, and a soldier, 
Omar. Opposition to him was based mainly on the feeling 
that he was an infatuated or deceitful " sorcerer," to which 
his way of life and oracular utterances lent probabiHty,^ 
but also on hatred of his teaching, not indeed of mono- 
theism but of the practical results of opposing polytheism. 
Mecca was a town of plutocrats ruling an equally material- 
istic populace. No one cared whether Mohammed taught 
monotheism ; abstract theology has never annoyed Orientals. 
But the city got wealth from its cult of gods and even 
Mohammed was at first inclined to temporize and admit the 
possible power of the local divinities. He soon recanted 
this " suggestion (whisper) of Satan," however, and his 

1 Religious ardour leading to ecstasy was inspired by preliminary 
seclusion, in which the sorcerer, wrapped in a blanket, induced the 
feverish excitement which preceded the oracular outburst. It is 
probable that Mohammed practiced this mode of inducing spiritual 
possession. 



454 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

renewed activity led to persecution on the part of the Kore- 
ish family of Mecca to which his own family belonged. 
Some of his earliest inspirations were little more than im- 
precations against his family and townsmen. He and his 
then took refuge with Abyssinian Christians, whose refusal 
to give up the refugees favourably inclined him at first to 
Christians till he found that he could not convert them. 
His attitude toward Jews and Christians in later life was 
consistently one of disparagement and antagonism, because 
they did not believe in monotheism, but (as he thought) 
Christians made of Jesus and Mary two gods besides God, 
and the Jews " made Ezra the son of God." Yet as most 
of the Jewish tradition was in line with Mohammed's teach- 
ing, he accepted it in the distorted form known to him 
(Ishmael, for example, assumes Isaac's place), but he 
rejected God's " resting '" on the seventh day, and any im- 
plication of association with God of other powers as co- 
gods, sons, or daughters (angels).^ 

Mohammed, like Zoroaster, accomplished little for ten 
years and finally prevailed not by argument but by force. 
Deserting Mecca and his own people, who generally re- 
jected him, he had recourse to half Jewish tribes who, ex- 
pecting a Messiah and disliking Mecca, accepted the Prophet. 
Mohammed with Abu Bakr fled to Yathreb, "two against 
many," as the latter despairingly said ; but " three -' said 
Mohammed, " for God is with us." This Flight, Hijra or 

1 God's day is a thousand or fifty thousand years (xxxii. 4; Ixx. 
4). [Present references are to Suras of the Koran,] God "sent 
apostles and followed them up with Jesus and gave him the gospel 
and placed kindness and compassion in the heart of his followers " 
(Ivii. 25 f.) ; but Jesus "never said that he and his mother were 
two gods" (v. 113). "If God has a son I will be first to worship 
him; but join none with God" and "say not Three. God is only 
one" (iv. 169; Ixxii. 20). Later, Mohammed says of both Jew and 
Christian as preachers of " Shirk " (association of others with 
God), "God fight them, how they lie!" (ix. 30). For pardcletos, 
John xvi. 7, Mohammed believed that Jesus said {periklutos or its 
equivalent) Ahmed, which in turn means Mohammed (praised, / 
celebrated) : "Jesus said, I give you glad tidings of an apostle who y 
shall come after me, whose name shall be Ahmed" (Ixi. 6). 



THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED 455 

Hegira, fixes the date of the Mohammedan era as June i6, 
622. The week-day on which Mohammed entered Yathreb 
became the Mohammedan holy day, Friday ; the town itself, 
largely Jewish, becoming known thereafter as the Prophet's 
Town, Medina. There he built a mosque, regulated the 
simple rites of his religion, and appointed the first crier 
of prayer, muezzin. The Jews, however, soon parted from 
Mohammed and as already explained he regarded them 
thenceforth as enemies, turning now to Mecca not to Jeru- 
salem in prayer, and instituting the fast of Ramadhan to 
take the place of Jewish fasts. He began to preach a " holy 
war," put a Jewess to death, exiled a Jewish tribe (they 
perhaps deserved their fate), robbed a Mecca caravan, sub- 
dued several Bedouin tribes, and by constant fighting caused 
himself to be recognized as an independent prince, till in 
630 he was able to return to Mecca as its master; whence 
he instituted raids and united his followers in the hope of 
booty in this life and beatitude in the next. He died June 8, 
632. 

Mohammed was the first and greatest of sundry Arabian 
prophets. He succeeded in his efforts to establish a new 
religion partly because of his genuine enthusiasm and strong 
personality, and partly because of his political sagacity. 
His aims were directly opposed to the material interests of 
his people, and his religion from the beginning broke up the 
tribal unity which was the key-note of the Arabian state. 
As the Dionysiac and Orphic cults in Greece undermined 
the religious and political conditions, so Mohammedanism 
substituted a religious unity for a political group. From 
the economic side it substituted prosperity through conquest 
and rapine for the commercial prosperity which had made 
Mecca a well-known mart. Mohammed, however, preached 
nothing new to his countrymen, who had long been ac- 
quainted with the doctrine of the Judgment Day and the 
idea of divine unity. Yet to reassert an old truth is to 
originate again. Mohammed's originality lay in his insist- 
ence on the truth of a judgment to come and its implication 



45^ THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

of the necessity of an ethical improvement on the part of 
those who were to meet it and to be judged by a Creator 
who held men responsible for their belief in a moral God 
and for conduct consonant with that belief. He did not 
deny that there were spirits (worshipped by the Arabs), 
but he forbade their association with God. He did not do 
away with the fetish-stone, but sanctified it ; he did not stop 
the pilgrimage, but made it an adjunct to the worship of 
the One God. Ethically he taught justice and truth, repre- 
hended pride and envy, and exalted filial devotion and 
charity.^ Orphans, mothers, and wives were subjects of 
his special consideration ; he denounced the current practice 
of female infanticide, improved divorce laws, restricted 
polygamy to the possession of four wives, and then only 
if the husband could treat them equitably, and forbade 
trading in slaves. He also tried to abolish the blood-feud 
and opposed the use of intoxicants and gambling. A pure 
heart and good works as concomitants of faith in One God 
and the Judgment Day became the ethical ideal. 

Not less firmly did Mohammed believe that he was God*s 
apostle and that his oracular utterances as at first revealed 
to him were words of God, a graded and continuous illumi- 
nation of divine truths. These utterances, revealed piece- 
meal during twenty-three years as the Koran (reading or 
recitation) are in rhymed prose containing 114 chapters or 
Suras, in which the " inspiration," judged by style and 
matter, varies considerably. But to the believer all is 
equally inspired: "God taught the pen" (xcvi. 5). Ga- 
briel appeared twice to him, once on the occasion when he 
made a miraculous night- journey from Mecca to Jerusa- 
lem and once on the first revelation of the Koran (liii. 5). 
His opponents said that he was "possessed by a Jinn"; 
but he indignantly denies this, as he charges, on the con- 
trary, that these opponents worship angels and Jinns in- 

1 The gentleness of Mohammed's teaching is not perhaps without 
a physical basis. He is described as a man inclined to melancholy 
and unable to endure the slightest pain. 



THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED 457 

stead of God (xxxiv. 40-45). Of Mohammed's early hon- 
esty there can be no doubt. He pretends to nothing save 
his inspiration. " I am but a mortal like yourselves ; I am 
inspired that your God is only One God" (xviii. no). 
His opponents cry for a sign and say that unless he brings 
it his revelation is but a jumble of dreams or a forgery; 
but Mohammed says that he has no sign other than the 
truth : " We hurl the truth against falsehood and truth 
crashes into it and falsehood vanishes" (xxxi. 5f.). And 
God says, " I will show you My signs, but do not hurry 
Me" (xxi. 38). Mohammed compares himself to the 
prophets of old and his environment with theirs. Thus he 
says that Noah and the rest proclaimed " No God but God " 
and the great men of that day said, " This fellow is only a 
mortal like yourselves, who wishes to have dominion over 
you; if God had pleased he would have sent angels (not 
Noah, to warn you) ; he is only a man possessed," exactly 
the language used of Mohammed (xxiii. 25). So of old, 
says Mohammed, they called The Day (of resurrection) a 
lie, saying: " There is only our life in this world; we live 
and die and shall not be raised" (ib. 39). Again and 
again Mohammed simply and earnestly insists that the 
Koran is " a revelation brought down by Gabriel (the 
Faithful Spirit) in plain Arabic " and foretold in the scrip- 
tures of which it is a continuation (xxvi. I93f.). But the 
Arabs said that the Pentateuch and the Koran were both 
works of sorcery which backed up each other and declared 
" We disbelieve in all" (xxviii. 48) ; to which the Prophet 
replied : " Then bring a better revelation and I will follow 
it." Elsewhere he cries : " God has sent down the best of 
legends ... it is a grand story, yet ye turn from it " 
(xxxviii. 59; xxxix. 24). 

Mohammedanism, however, would never have become im- 
portant had it not been for military success. Many repudi- 
ated the faith as soon as Mohammed died and, as before his 
death so now, orthodoxy was upheld only with the sword. 
Islam means resignation, but only with God's will; it does 



458 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

not imply patience with infidels who oppose the faith. Ag- 
gressive unbelievers must be made resigned ; submissive un- 
believers were at first unmolested, afterwards they too were 
reduced, not to belief but to submission. To reduce op- 
ponents to tax-payers rather than to converts was the aim 
of the body politic, which became the church militant imme- 
diately after the Prophet's death. 

The soldier of the church as the soldier of God was not 
permitted to commit suicide or to become an ascetic, as 
that would be to desert his post. He must be resigned to 
fate as apportioned by God. But this fatalism of Islam 
was not yielding to fate as chance, only to the predetermin- 
ing will of God. 

Thus Mohammedanism differed from the exclusiveness 
of the Jewish religion; it received all into its fold. But it 
differed also from the Christian in substituting submission 
for mission. At a later stage it drew from Christianity 
the practice of celibacy and asceticism, foreign to its earlier 
spirit, and also taught that a soldier might be a soldier 
allegorically, a merchant for example, fighting against evil 
impulses. But the early church was essentially militant in 
a literal sense. At first toleration was the rule. ". There 
is no compulsion in religion " is said to have been said by 
Mohammed and he gave freedom of service to the Chris- 
tians of Najran (in Yemen) : " No image or cross shall 
be destroyed; they shall not be oppressed." But success 
brought intolerance. The Prophet of Mecca became the 
Prince of Medina, no longer a " plain warner " but God's 
Apostle, in whom as in God the faithful must believe and 
to whom heretics must pay the price of conquest. Power 
acquired through faith " in God and His Apostle " of course 
impressed him as added proof of his divine mission. His 
religious feeling was still genuine but his religion more and 
more included himself and he appears in later life to have 
utilized his revelations to the good of the Prophet as well 
as to the glory of God. In general, however, Mohammed 
is sincere. 



THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED 459 

Thus he confesses, by implication, that he was wrong 
owing to a suggestion of Satan (xxii. 50 f.), in propitiating 
the Koreish by admitting the san.ctity of their gods ; and on 
one occasion when he had snubbed a poor man, who had 
interrupted him to get instruction, he admitted his fault 
and records in the Koran the rebuke he deservedly re- 
ceived (Ixxx.). Only an honest and good man would have 
done this. Mohammed professed himself to be a late but 
true prophet of God, as much inspired as was Abraham 
(whose religion was also his) to teach pure religion and 
undefiled to those who worshipped idols and ignored or 
denied a life to come. But his revelation is better than 
Abraham's, who condoned idolatry (ix. 115). Nor, in 
Mohammed's teaching, does God require the Jewish sacri- 
fice : " I have created man and Jinn only to worship Me ; 
I do not desire provision from them, nor do I wish them 
to feed Me. .Verily God is the provider" (li. 56). A lib- 
eral simplici^ marks Mohammed's creed : " Those who 
say our Lord is God and then keep straight, there is no fear 
for them " (xlvi. lof.). As in Zoroastrianism, the believer 
is a helper of God. " God will help him who helps Him " 
(xxii. 41) ; " So be ye helpers of God, even as Jesus' apos- 
tles said: 'We are God's helpers'" (Ixi. 14; cf. iii. 45), 
These phrases imply that the believer " helps " by battling 
with the misbeliever, as is clearly said in the late Mecca or 
Medina Sura (xlvi.): "When ye meet those who mis- 
believe, strike off their heads or hold them (for ransom) ; 
those slain in God's cause shall not go wrong; if ye help 
God He will help you." In the earlier period the note is 
not so militant as ethical and religious : *' Blessed are they, 
for they shall inherit Paradise, who believe, who are hum- 
ble, who do not talk vainly, who are charitable, who are 
blameless as respects women, and who observe their pledges 
and covenants and guard their prayers" (xxiii. if.).^ 
" Believe in Him and He will pardon and save " (xlvi. 30). 

1 Blameless means chaste except for lawful intercourse with 
wives and slaves (owned by the believer). 



46o THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

•Rare is the higher injunction to do good for evil : " Re- 
pel evil with what is better" (xxiii. 97). An approach to 
Indie phrase and thought may be observed in the likeness 
of life to a mere pastime as compared with the real life 
hereafter : " The life of this world is but sport and play ; 
the abode of the next world is (real) life" (xxix. 64). 
Indie too is the repeated phrase, " No burdened soul shall 
bear another's burden; who errs, errs only against his own 
soul " (xvii. 16; liii. 39). Compare too (Hi. 22) : " Every 
man is pledged for what he earns," that is, every one is 
pledged for his conduct and redeems himself if he does 
well. This individualistic view, however, is modified by 
the doctrine of divine mercy and grace. " God gives His 
grace to whomsoever He will; God is Lord of mighty 
grace" (Ixii. 4). This mercy may be extended at the in- 
tercession of the Prophet (see below). In general, how- 
ever, Mohammed taught a religion of fear, not of love, and, 
until modified by the Sufi element introduced -later, it was a 
religion lacking in two regards, that of the conception of 
the Fatherhood of God, the milder aspect, and that of the 
immanence of God, the universal aspect. There are 
phrases which countenance both aspects and they have been 
taken by later Mohammedans to authorize both. Thus the 
mercy of God (as above) is dwelt upon by Mohammed, who 
also speaks of God as within man and nearer than his 
jugular vein ; but these are not the views usually presented, 
and though the Koran is full of contradictions the trend of 
teaching and the teaching accepted by early Mohammedans 
show that Allah is rather the older Jewish Yahweh, a 
transcendent God, fearful rather than kind. 

The fundamental teachings of Mohammed as expressed 
in his own words bear the same relation to the theology of 
Moslem scholars as Christ's words beaV to Christian theol- 
ogy. Mohammed himself was no scholar; nor was he in 
any way a metaphysician. He has no speculation and very 
little logic in the Koran; what little there is seems to be 
remarkably naive. " How can one believe in more than one 



THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED 4^1 

God? If there were more than one, each would take his 
own creation and some would have exalted themselves over 
others" (xxiii. 93). "How can one fail to believe in the 
raising of the dead? Did not God create you once? How 
then should he not create you a second time? Twice-born' 
and twice-slain is every one" (xl.). "We (Allah) have 
made waters from the cloud for you to drink, when We 
might have made it unfit to drink (pungent), and We have 
made the tree from which ye make fire; can ye make the 
tree? Why then do ye not praise Me?" (Ivi. 67-70). 
" God sends lightning for fear and hope (of rain) ; He sends 
his thunder — which celebrates His praise — and therewith 
smites whom He will ; and yet they dispute about God ! " 
(xiii. lof.).^ "Do they (who are misbelievers) not re- 
gard whatever thing God has created? Its shadow falls 
to right or left, shrinking up in adoration of God . . . then 
will ye not fear Him?" (ibid, and xvi. 5of.). This is 
obviously the language not of a metaphysician but of a 
prophet ; so also is that in which appeal is made to the past. 
" Will ye not fear God ? Remember that He once changed 
men to apes because they fished on the Sabbath " (ii. 6of.).^ 
Of subordinate importance are those teachings which im- 
plicitly or explicitly express belief in a mass of legends 

1 Practically the same argument as is foimd in the Rig Veda, in 
American, and even in African religions : God is demonstrated by 
his activity; eflfect proves cause. It is quite reasonable to suppose 
that the first idea of a Heavenly Spirit (in distinction from vague 
potencies, disease-devils, etc.) arose from this source, recognition 
of an active power above, as Jupiter Feretrius, the smiter, etc. Due 
to later contemplation is the logic which argues God, from the 
orderly processes of the heavens, as Right (Order). 

2 Tradition says that this happened in David's time ; hence the 
respect for the Sabbath. Another (ibid.) example is given by the 
legend that a mountain was held over the people to frighten them. 
Possibly a cloud is meant (compare cloud as mountain in the Veda), 
as it is said elsewhere that (jod sends down mountains, that is, 
clouds, from the sky to give rain (xxiv. 42). Here, too, is the 
suggestion that men should praise God since even the birds praise 
Him. In xxix. 64, it is said bitterly that men in ships call upon 
God to save them, but, when He has saved, "they worship others 
with Him." 



4^2 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

gathered from Jewish and Arabic tradition. Mohammed 
accepted such of these as suited him and used them for 
illustrative instruction. To us they are either parts of 
Jewish literature or amplifications thereof more curious 
than valuable. As in the case of the substitution of Ishmael 
for Isaac, they show that Mohammed relied on a loose pop- 
ular version of tradition liable to historical error. A few 
examples will suffice to indicate the use made of these leg- 
ends, with which are mingled bits of history from recent 
times, such as the destruction of the Fellows of the Ele- 
phant at the hands of the Lord, who overthrew them with 
stones hurled by birds (cv.). Thus instruction is derived 
from the tale of the seven sleepers, who passed three hun- 
dred and nine years in a cave with their dog; from that of 
El 'Hidhr and the water of life; from that of the two- 
horned Alexander; and from that of Gog and Magog 
(xviii.). Moses burned his tongue; Aaron was .his vizir 
(xx.) ; the queen of Sheba worshipped the sun; the hoopoe 
was absent among the birds assembled for Solomon and 
was threatened with his anger (xxvii. 2of.). When Peter 
converted Antioch the shout of Gabriel destroyed a host 
(xxxvi. 28). Gabriel bade Job strike the earth with his 
foot and there sprang up a healing fountain, bathing wherein 
Job was cured and his wife became young and beautiful 
(xxxviii., also legend of Solomon's ring, ibid.). Noah said 
to his people, " Ye shall surely not leave your gods, neither 
Wadd, nor Suwajh nor Yajhuth nor Ya'uq, nor Nasr, who 
have led many astray " ^ (Ixxi. 2of.). 

On the other hand, one cannot dismiss as unimportant 
those teachings which, instead of looking back upon earth 
(pseudo-historical), look up to the world unseen and on 
to the fate of man, for they give the intellectual environ- 
ment in which alone could spring up to fruitfulness the 
teachings of Mohammed based on belief in the resurrection, 

1 These were Arabian gods of Mohammed's day in the form of 
idols, representing the sky-god as a man, a woman (earth-god- 
dess?), a lion, a horse, and an eagle, respectively. 



THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED 4^3 

in a judgment to come, and in One God. Had these been 
left vague outlines, they would not have had effect. It 
was necessary to describe God and His works, to paint viv- 
idly the day to be expected, to relate in detail the sorrows 
and joys hereafter. We may reduce the frequent repetitions 
on these themes to one collective statement. 

God is One without a second. His face is the East and 
the West. " Adore not sun and moon but God " (xH. 2>7)- 
He created the seven heavens and the earth and all between 
and the seven hells (hell with seven doors) and Adam from 
clay and Iblis (Satan) from smokeless flame. And because 
Iblis would not bow to Adam, seeing in him only clay, he 
was driven from heaven, and he and his devils still are 
pelted by angels (with shooting stars), whenever the devils 
listen at the under side of heaven seeking to learn what is 
to be, that they may mislead mankind (Ixxii. 9, etc.).^ 
There are many spiritual powers but they are not associates 
of God (not real gods). Some are those who are gods to 
the unbelievers ; some are God's servants as angels, who are 
not "daughters of God" (as unbelievers say); some are 
flame-born Jinns, to whom it is a sin to pray. Avoid the 
abomination of idols (xxii. 32). ^ Think not that God is 
afar merely; if three whisper together God is there as the 
fourth (Iviii. 8).^ He is nearer to man than his jugular 
vein, though so great that He created heaven and earth 
in six days without weariness (i. isf.)- He is at his busi- 
ness every day (Iv.). He is God; save him there is no 
God ; he knows the unseen and the visible ; he is the Merci- 
ful, the Compassionate, the King, the Holy, the Peace-giver, 
the Faithful, the Protector, the Mighty, the Repairer, the 
Great. Celebrated be his praise above the praise of all 

1 Mohammed himself preached to the Jinns when men had re- 
jected him (Ixxii. i). 

2 There is little indication that Mohammed objected to statues 
and paintings, as^ is generally assumed. Idols and false gods are 
synonymous terms with him and he objects not to the portrait but 
to the worship. 

2 Compare in the Atharva Veda : '" If two men talk together in 
secret, god Varuna is there as the third." 



464 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

(others) joined with him. He is God, Creator, Maker, 
Fashioner; His are the excellent names. Whatsoever 
things are in heaven and in earth celebrate his praises, for 
God is the Mighty, the Wise (lix., a Medina Sura). God, 
there is no God hut he, the living, the self -existent. Slum- 
ber takes him not, nor sleep. His is what is in the heavens 
and what is in the earth. Who intercedes with him save 
by his permission f He knows what is before them and 
what behind them, and they comprehend naught of his 
knowledge except he pleases. His throne extends over the 
heavens and earth, nor does it zveary him to guard them, 
for he is high and grand (the "verse of the throne," fre- 
quently inscribed in mosques, also a Medina passage, ii. 

256). 1 

There is little specifically Moslem in the story of creation 
except the insistence on the fact that God did not rest on 
the seventh day (i. 37) and the synchronous creation of 
Iblis ^ from flame and Adam from clay. The earth is made 
for man. Clouds let down water for him; God made the 
sea and the camel of the sea (ship) for him; night and 
day were made for him to sleep and work; trees subserve 
his needs ; animals are for his use. It is an anthropocentric 
material creation. But man himself God created " only to 
adore God " (li. 56). God burst apart the originally united 
mass of heavens and earth and flattened out earth for 

1 Only twenty-four of the hundred and fourteen Suras (sections) 
of the Koran are from the later Medina period; the others are 
referred by Arabic scholars to various periods of Mohammed's 
sojourn in Mecca, from the first to the fifth year, the fifth and 
sixth years, and from the seventh year to the Hegira; but the evi- 
dence is more or less doubtful in most cases. In contrast ^o the 
magnificent " verse of the throne," above, the earliest period is in 
general represented by greater humility and more ^personal feeling ; 
the later by a more mechanical style with a growing sense of power 
and more princely tone on the part of the prophet. 

2 Iblis or Satan is not the accuser but the " Whisperer " of evil 
suggestions (cxiv). As God created him; so the believer prays: 
"I seek refuge from the Whisperer " as also " I seek refuge in the 
Lord of light from the evil of what He has created, and from the 
evil of the night and witches" (who blow on knots, cxiii). 



THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED 465 

man's needs, pegging it down with mountains, which are 
sometimes regarded as weights to keep the earth from fly- 
ing off. Otherwise there is no pecuhar view in regard to 
earth itself and we may pass on to the consideration of 
heaven and hell.^ 

At death " a driver and a witness come with the soul," 
which the angel of death gently releases in the case of the 
believer but violently tears out in that of the unbeliever (1. 
20; Ixxix. if.). Each then receives his account-book, which 
is preserved in the " high-places " or in the *' prison " of 
hell (Ixxxiii. 5-20) and is presented to him to read, in the 
right hand if he is pious, in the left bound behind his back, 
if sinful (Ixxxiv.). This book will be brought forth by God 
on the resurrection-day. Two attendant spirits have in- 
scribed it with every act committed in life, though every 
man's fate (literally bird, augury) has been hung around 
a man's neck from the beginning (xvii. 15).^ The book and 
the balance (ci.) seem to imply a difference of methods; in 
the latter case the sinner is weighed and found wanting, a 
simpler means. When judged, the pious is led to heaven, a 
garden of bliss, where he will lie for ever, dressed in green 
silk, satin, or brocade, on green cushioned couches, facing 
others similarly blessed, all wearing silver and gold brace- 
lets, and enjoying " fruit and forgiveness." The forgiven 
and blest will eat bananas and other fruits without indiges- 
tion and drink without subsequent headache milk and honey 
and wine, which is carried about in silver goblets by youths 
and is tempered with streams from the rivers and fountains 
of Paradise, so that camphor and ginger and tasnim add to 
its taste. For further enjoyment there will be chaste, well- 
grown, large-eyed maids of the same age as the believer. 

1 That mountains hold earth steady, is also a Vedic idea. In the 
Koran it is said that God cast mountains upon earth lest it should 
move (xvi. 15; xxi. 32; xxxi. 9). They are like stakes to the 
couch of earth (Ixxviii. 6). On the last day they will move about 
(Hi. 10). God outstretched earth and threw upon it firm moun- 
tains (1. 7). 

2 Written " on his forehead," in the late view (taken from India). 



466 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

It is a place where there will be *' no folly and no lie." ^ 
The sinner in hell alternates between flame and boiling 
water, has a dress of flame, and drinks boiling water and 
pus. Even the bitter tree of hell called El Zaqqun, whose 
head is as it were a sheaf of devils, is regarded as providing 
a '* boiling " food which the sinner has to eat or drink.^ No 
torments save heat, maces, and the implied beating, are de- 
scribed, unless the fact that sinners are bound together be 
regarded as torment Hell is not guarded by devils but by 
nineteen angels (Ixxiv. 30). The sinner is described as 
" neither dead nor alive " in hell fire but ardently and vainly 
longing to end his eternal torment. Conspicuous for its ab- 
sence in the Koran is the sensual element. Paradise is sen- 
suous but not sensual. Its tone is not that of passion but of 
"Peace, peace"; its joys are those appreciated by desert- 
riding toilers, cool comfort and ease, the pure water and 
green shade to which the thought of the Bedouin naturally 
turns. The maids of his Paradise are modest maids " re- 
straining their looks" (xxxvii. 45-50), and the water is 
without " insidious spirit " (ibid) or, if wine is enjoyed, it 
does not intoxicate. 

The particularity of description is greater in respect of 
heaven than of hell. Besides green cushions, the believer 
will have green robes of silk or brocade (xviii. 30; here 
Paradise is Firdaus, 105 f.). Apparently all m.ust pass 
through hell : " Not one of you who will not go down to 

1 Compare Suras xxxvii. 4o£. ; xlvii. i6f. ; Iv and Ivi ; Ixxvi. 5f . ; 
Ixxvii. 40; Ixxviii. 35; Ixxxiii. 26. 

2 For the torments of hell, compare xiv. 19, 50; xx. 75f. ; xxii. 
20; Ixxxiv; for the infernal tree, which grows where even the 
stones are red-hot, xvii. 62; xxxvii. 6of . ; xliv. 45. According to 
xHii. 75, unbeHevers in hell are chained to devils and " there is no 
end of hell for them though they cry on Malik" (keeper of hell). 
In Ixix. 31, the sinner with his book in his left hand is first fettered, 
then broiled, then forced "into a chain of seventy cubits as punish- 
ment because "he believed not in God nor fed the poor." The 
length and purpose of this chain is unique in the Koran, as is the 
statement in the same chapter that on the last day the heaven shall 
be cleft asunder and God appear on a throne borne by eight 
(angels). 



THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED 4^7 

it. Then We will save those who fear Us, but We will 
leave evil-doers therein on their knees" (xix. 70). But 
some take this to refer to the passage of El Aaraf , the bridge 
between heaven and hell.^ The intercession of intercessors 
profits not in hell such men as have not prayed, nor given 
to the poor, but have plunged into discussions and called the 
Judgment-day a lie (ibid. 34). Minor sins, called abomina- 
tions of Satan, are wine, games of chance, and divining (v. 
93). 2 As believers enjoy bliss for aye, so sinners suffer for 
ever : " On those who die misbelieving is the curse of 
God, and of the angels, and of mankind together; to dwell 
therein for aye (cf. xxxix. 55) ;^ the torment shall not be 
lightened for them, nor shall they be respited (or looked 
upon"; ii. I56f.). In the Chapter of the Believers (xxiii. 
loi) it is implied that some (Arabs) believed in metempsy- 
chosis : " When death comes to any one he says, ' My Lord, 
Send ye (plural of respect) me back (to life) that haply I 
may do right in what I have left ; but no ! Behind him is 
a bar (till the resurrection)." * 

Of the seven " solid " heavens (Ixvii. 3 ; Ixxi. 141 ; Ixxviii. 
lof.) and seven hells we learn little in the Koran itself, only 
that the former were created in stories in two days and God 
adorned the lowest with stars like lamps and furnished it 
with guardian angels (xli.). Later tradition gives the names 
of the seven, partly made from epithets applied in the Koran 
to heaven in general, such as "(We have made them) an 

1 Probably the whole conception had filtered to Mohammed 
through a late Jewish and Christian medium. That every one must 
go to hell was also Jewish belief (but not Zoroastrian). In Hindu- 
ism the idea that a good act could balance a bad act (and so save 
the sinner from punishment) was not entertained. Every bad act 
was punished in hell even, if committed involuntarily. 

2 In ii. 216, Mohammed says that there is profit and loss in wine 
and the game of chance here alhided to; but the disadvantage is 
greater than the advantage. Divining is done by arrows. The list 
mentions " statues " also, supposed to be chess, which some Moham- 
medans therefore renounce. 

3 In Ixxviii. 24 hell is a place in which " to tarry for ages." 

* Saadia (ninth century) says that some Jews believed in metem- 
psychosis. 



468 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

abode of peace" (or "garden of pleasure"), partly from 
the names Eden and Firdaus. Still less individuality is to 
be found in the seven hells, Gehenna, flaming fire, scorching 
fire, etc., ending with the abyss. It is clear that the resur- 
rection is the great stumbling-block to the unbelievers. 
Over and over again Mohammed rallies them with the cry, 
" If God could create you originally, cannot he create you 
again? As you came out of death or not-being into exist- 
ence by stages, as the embryo evolves, can you not come 
out of death after life ? " But what the soul is doing be- 
tween death and Judgment is not explained. The unbeliever 
mocks (xxxvii. 15) : " Shall I when reduced to dry bones 
become alive again ? " Mohammed retorts, with the only 
trace of humour he shows, " Wait till The (Judgment) Day 
arrives and you will find out ! " At least one passage (Ixvii. 
25-29) seems to show that the Day was not far distant: 
" When comes the Judgment only God knows ; but ye shall 
soon know who is mistaken" (Mohammed or the unbe- 
liever). The usual Mohammedan belief is that the good 
rest at peace till the Judgment Day, but the wicked are tor- 
mented even in their graves. 

The religion of Mohammed is not one of form but of 
faith and good works. He commends pilgrimage to the 
Old House (xxii. 30) and the attitude of devotion, bidding 
the believer turn to Mecca (originally to Jerusalem) and 
hear the voice that calls to prayer, and come to the mosque, 
leaving traffic, on the Day of Congregation (Ixii. 9, Fri- 
day).^ He also substitutes (viii. 35) four sacred months 
for Jewish fasts, making especially a fast the month of 
Ramadhan when the Prophet received the revelation of the 
Koran. Yet if one is ill the fast may be postponed till an- 

1 Mohammed says that the early part of the night is " more up- 
right for speech" and recommends spending half the night in 
prayer (Ixxiii. 6). In v. 9 he tells his followers to wash their 
faces and their hands before they pray and wipe the head and 
feet, but if more convenient they may use sand for water. Prayer 
is here substituted for the " whistling and clapping hands " (viii. 
35) which characterized the worship of idols. 



THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED 4^9 

Other time or one may redeem oneself by feeding the poor 
(ii. i8of.). Pork and food offered to idols are forbidden, 
but Mohammed makes his religion on the formal side an 
easy one. " God desires for you what is easy not what is 
difficult" (ibid.). So too the believer need not puzzle over 
the dark sayings of revealed religion, but " read what is 
easy of the Koran" (Ixxiii. 20). As to sacrifice he says, 
" Sacrifice camels to eat in the name of the Lord, saying Bis- 
millah; their- meat and blood will never reach to God but 
your piety will reach to him " (xxi. 3of.). 

Much more important than form is the religion of good 
deeds. " Paradise is prepared for those who expend in 
alms, for those who repress their rage and pardon men : 
God loves the kind" (iii. I2^i.). This is said in connexion 
with the injunction to beg forgiveness of God for wrong and 
not repeat the wrong, for God forgives the repentant. 
*' Righteousness is not that one turns his face to East or to 
West, but that one believes in God and the last day and the 
angels and the Book and the prophets and gives one's wealth 
for love of God to kindred and orphans and the poor and 
the son of the road (wayfarer) and beggars and captives, 
that one is steadfast in prayer and gives alms, and abides 
by one's covenant and is patient in poverty and distress and 
in times of violence; these are they who are faithful be- 
lievers" (ii. i73f.). "Wealth and children are an adorn- 
ment of the life of this world, but enduring good works are 
better with thy Lord, both as a recompense and as a hope " 
(xviii. 44). *' Free the captive, feed the orphan and poor, 
beHeve, encourage others in patience and mercy" (xc. I5f.). 
" What one loans to God one will find again with God " 
(Ixxiii. 2of.). At first this " loan " was an alms, afterwards 
it became virtually a tribute or tax for holy wars, etc., but 
it remained "as an insurance for the soul" (ii. 265f.). 
Kindness to women and children is an especial trait of Mo- 
hammedanism. Against the infanticide of his day Moham- 
med is inexorable : " When the girl that was buried alive 
shall ask for what sin she was slain, the sinful soul shall 



470 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

know what it has done ! " (Ixxx. 9).^ He enjoins that " be- 
lieving women " shall not be given back to their unbelieving 
husbands from whom they have fled (Ix. 10) ; also that the 
purdah or curtain shall be used except when a woman con- 
verses with fathers, brothers, sons, and nephews (possibly 
not before the Medina period, xxxiii. 55). 

It is perhaps only fair that a prophet should be judged 
by his acts as well as by his words. Mohammed's attitude 
toward his old first wife was always admirable. His anger 
because Ayesha ^ was the object of scandal is natural, but it 
was perhaps too personal a matter for " inspiration " on the 
subject, though the Prophet's " curse on all those who impute 
evil to chaste women " is justified. In the later Sura on 
this matter (Medina, xxiv.), Mohammed prescribes the dress 
and adornment suited to good women ; they shall not display 
ankle-ornaments ; they shall pull a kerchief over the bosom ; 
they shall not display their ornaments except to the hus- 
band, father, etc. There is nothing about covering the 
face. On the other hand, Mohammed's marriage with the 
wife of his adopted son Zaid and his connexion with a 
Coptic girl called Mary (xxxiii. 36; Ixvi.), can scarcely be 
called admirable. " Inspired " verses to palliate the Proph- 
et's self-indulgence seem to the outsider a profanation. 
Mohammed was now a prince and thought himself entitled 
to special consideration as God's apostle ; yet it is difficult 
always to believe in his complete sincerity. In other re- 
spects it may be granted that success convinced Mohammed 
more than aught else that his side was that of God and that, 
religion consisting at a time of war in being helpful to God, 
he held more and more to the militant attitude, which in- 

1 Mohammed taunts the Arabs with ascribing daughters to God 
and then being angry when they themselves have daughters (xvi. 
59; xHii. 15). The so-called "daughters of God" are (xxxvii and 
passim) angels created by God as servants. They have wings 
(xxxv. if.) in pairs or threes or fours. 

2 Ayesha, after the death of his first wife, was the most influ- 
ential member of Mohammed's harem. She was the daughter of 
Abu Bakr. 



THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED 471 

eluded recourse to trickery and cruelty. God himself meets 
the wiles of his opponents with cleverer tricks and strata- 
gems, as of old when the Jews were crafty " and God was 
crafty, for God is the best of crafty ones " (iii. 45 f. ; cf. vii. 
97, "secure from the craft of God"). It is a believer's 
duty to overcome rather than convert the foes of God. Yet 
those who have not actually fought against the true faith 
may be taken as patrons and one must act righteously and 
justly toward them (Ix. 8f.). Considering the mockery and 
abuse to which Mohammed was exposed,^ the treachery with 
which he was encompassed,^ the only wonder is that he 
could at any time speak kindly of unbelievers. He discrimi- 
nates in the later Koran between Jews and Christians, say- 
ing that the latter are more lovable than the former, though 
both pervert Scripture. Mohammed's wrath is most un- 
bridled against those of his own race and family who re- 
jected him and some of the earlier Suras are, as said above, 
little more than curses against such opponents. With 
waxing power this gross personal abuse was modified or 
rather it gave place to an arrogant assumption of power. 
Yet the Prophet was careful not to encourage flattery. 
" Think not that ye oblige me by becoming converted ; God 
obliges you by directing you to the truth " (xlix. I5f.). In 
this chapter he warns against the too facile " we believe " 
of the desert Arabs. True behevers show their belief by 
their conduct and do not backbite (compare civ., " woe to 
the slanderous backbiter"). All believers are brothers and 
should fight for the faith, " with wealth and person, believ- 
ing in God and His Apostle." Mohammed, despite his igno- 

1 Instead of saying Es sal&m 'halaika ("peace upon thee") they 
used to say to Mohammed Es sam 'hailaika ("mischief upon thee"). 
When he spoke of Judgment, they asked where their fathers' dead 
bones had risen, etc. (Iviii. 9). They also mocked at his "old 
folks' tales, v/ritten and dictated by others " and said that if revealed 
the Koran should have been revealed all at once (by Michael, not 
by Gabriel piecemeal). Compare xxv. 34 and ii gof, " v/ho is an 
enemy of Gabriel ? " They also effected to believe that " the Lord 
the Merciful" implied two gods (xvii. no), 

2 His own people planned to murder him before he fled to Yathreb. 



472 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

ranee, is remarkably free from superstition. To " avoid the 
door " and enter one's house by a hole made in the rear on 
returning from Mecca, he says is folly, although popular 
practice. Phases of the moon are not ominous but " merely 
indicate time" (ii. i85f.). It required courage, too, to re- 
fuse to pray to the Jinn of the dark valley when one actually 
believed the Jinn was there, as did Mohammed. Of his 
social reforms something has already been said ; some rested 
on a religious basis but others were purely ethical, such as 
his condemnation, as " fellows of hell-fire," of money- 
lenders (ii. 276f.). 

Whether Mohammed was acquainted with any non- 
Semitic religion may be doubted, though he alludes to Per- 
sian literature, but only as legends invidiously offered the 
people as more entertaining than the Koran, and mentions 
Loqman (Aesop, xxxi.). His general judgment of the 
" blue-eyed sinners " or Greeks, is not without keenness : 
" They know the outside of life but heed not the hereafter " 
(xx. 102; XXX. 6). Probably he could read, though, as in 
the case of Akbar, this has been questioned. But he ap- 
pears to have known the Pentateuch only at second hand, 
much as he knew the local legends, in which, however, he 
believed as surely as he did in the Scriptures. 

Later orthodox theology naturally endeavours to make 
more precise the teaching of the Koran but does not question 
its authority. God (the God, Allah) is defined under 
ninety-nine names as the Merciful, Compassionate, Pro- 
tector, Creator, Provider, Destroyer, Wise, Loving, Exalted, 
etc. He is eternal, indivisible, formless, comprehending all 
but comprehended of nothing. His angels are sexless, pure, 
created of fire; they neither eat nor drink nor have issue. 
Chief of them are the archangels, Gabriel, who revealed the 
Koran; Mikail (Michael), the guardian; Israfil, who sounds 
the last trump; and Azrail, the angel of death. Malik is 
the angel presiding over Jehennum (that is, Moloch over 
Gehenna). Kazan presides over heaven and Muhkir and 
Nakir are two angels who torment infidels in their graves. 



THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED 473 

Every man has two recording angels. Iblis is Saitan, a 
fallen angel become a devil. Jinns, born of smokeless flame 
and living especially in mountains and deserts, are usually 
malevolent but sometimes benevolent. Hell and heaven each 
contains seven divisions (as explained above). Until the 
resurrection the good repose at peace but the wicked suffer. 
Before The Day there will appear a guide, Mahdi, who 
will fill earth with righteousness ; but there will be no prophet 
after Mohammed, who, next to Jesus, is the Spirit of God 
(Ruha 'llah), as before Jesus came the three great prophets, 
Adam, Noah, Abraham, and sundry minor prophets. 

The practical duties of the Mohammedan are, as they 
have always been, the profession of faith, which originally 
ran, "There is no god but the God (Allah)," but even in 
Mohammed's day the present form was adopted : " There 
is no god but God and Mohammed is His apostle " ; further, 
repetition five times daily of a formula of prayer, while the 
worshipper bows and faces Mecca, after suitable ablutions, 
as explained above; fasting, especially during Ramadhan; 
almsgiving ; ^ and pilgrimage, if possible, to Mecca, which 
includes the saluting and kissing of the Black Stone and 
sacrifice of animals. This pilgrimage is really a relic of 
pre-Mohammedan days. It is called the Hajj. The Jews 
also made a feast (hagg) after going into the wilderness 
(Exodus X. 9) and it was this harking back to Abraham 
which made it possible for Mohammed to include in his 
ritual the pilgrimage to Mecca. He intended his religion 
for his own world of Arabia, but probably before his death 
he had already envisaged its wider growth. 

On Mohammed's death, as he had no son, his friend Abu 
Bakr became the first Caliph, " successor," soon succeeded 
by Omar, who defeated the Persians and destroyed the 
Byzantine empire in Syria, and then by Othman and Ali, 

1 The formal alms, as explained above, is interpreted as a tax 
(about two and a half per cent of one's property) for military (or 
State) needs. It does not exclude charity, and the Mohammedan is 
as apt to give alms as is another. 



474 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

both of whom were assassinated. The history of these few 
years reveals the poHtical ambition of Mohammed, whose 
own ideas were of course carried out by his intimate com- 
panions, and the change from a rehgious to a poHtical ideal. 
The first three Caliphs represented the Koreish family of 
Mecca. The true succession, however, lay, according to the 
Shiah, or Party of Ali, with the son of Fatima, Mohammed's 
daughter, who had married Ali, himself cousin of the 
Prophet. This son was Hosain, whose slaughter at Ker- 
bela (Oct. 9, 680) is still bewailed by the Shiites for ten 
days. The Omayyad governor of Syria became the candi- 
date of the Othman clique at Damascus and retained power 
till the middle of the eighth century. Islam had already 
begun to divide itself into political and religious parties. 
The Omayyads were a liberal theocratic faction devoted to 
Mohammedanism as a conquering worldly power quite as 
much as a religious ideal. The Shiites or Aliites opposed 
them because they would not admit the divine succession of 
their candidate. But, opposed to both, there soon arose a 
party of Aliites who were pietistic and puritanical and dis- 
satisfied with the worldliness of both the Shiites and Omay- 
yads. These were the Separators or Kharejites. They held 
that works were more than faith and inner purity more than 
external cleansing and though long since become of no po- 
litical importance they still retain these fundamental charac- 
teristics. To them the Caliphate was an office to be be- 
stowed only on the worthiest man, irrespective of family; 
they especially opposed the Omayyads and later influenced 
the Berber tribes against this hated family. 

The Aliites claimed that the divine spark had passed to 
Ali and their representative and that the Koran as God's 
word was the Way of truth, but no authority rested in 
Mohammed's companions. Hence they separated from the 
Sunni, those who later claimed that not only this norm but 
that of the immediate companions and followers of the 
Prophet made the Way or Sunna to be followed by the 
faithful. The Shiahs or Shiites are in general to be found 



THE RELIGION OF ^lOHAMMED 475 

in Persia and Africa; in India they make only a tenth of 
the sixty miUions Mohammedans, of whom the mass are 
Hindus by race (sons of converts) and more than a third 
BengaHs. In Persia royal blood united with that of the 
Prophet through the marriage of Hosain with a Sassanide 
princess.^ It is impossible here to review the many divi- 
sions of Islam, past and present, but the religious signifi- 
cance of one division cannot be passed over. Opposed to, 
and eventually triumphant over, the Syrian house of the 
Oma\^^ads, arose in 750 the Bagdad Caliphate of the 
Abbasides (Abbas was Mohammed's uncle), who secured 
also the Caliphate of Cairo and eventually passed their re- 
ligious pretensions over to the Sultan of Turkey. The 
change of power from Omayyads to Abbasides resulted in 
Islam becoming a world-religion instead of a national Ara- 
bian religion and did much to further the interest of Per- 
sian culture. It was this more liberal party that gave 
approval to Mutazilite rationalism (see below). Out of 
this party grew also the mysticism w^hich began within a 
century of Mohammed's time, but found its best soil in 
Persia, where God became a God of love and man became 
God. In such a school blossomed the great Persian poets, 
believers and non-believers, who were indeed scarcely to be 
distinguished.^ Opposed to this Caliphate was that of Spain. 
Although the Koran has always been the ultimate author- 
ity for all Aloslems, a saying attributed to Alohammed, 
namely, that " whatever has been well said I have myself 
said," made it easy to add " tradition " to the generally plain 

1 It is questionable how far the monotheistic tendencies to be 
seen in the Kabir and Nanak sects of India revert to ^^loslem (or 
Christian) influence. Akbar's religion was a liberal Sufism ct Per- 
sian form of Islam. Like the first Caliph he had a Christian wife, 
but it is unlikely that either of them suffered his harem to mould 
his creed. 

2 This Abbaside Caliphate raised Nestorian Syrians to high office 
and it was these Syrians, thus patronized, who translated Greek 
science and philosophy into Syriac and Arabic (e. g., Hippocrates, 
Galen, Euclid, Aristotle). The Arabs received, assimilated, and, 
bettering their Syrian instructors, became in turn the teachers of 
Europe in the thirteenth century. 



47^ THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

and quite circumscribed teachings of the Koran. The tra- 
dition, as to the Way of Mohammed, soon included that of 
his close companions and what they taught or did became 
authoritative to the orthodox (Sunni) as the right Way or 
Sunna and was accepted as Hadith (authoritative tradition), 
just as Tradition in India soon became almost as authorita- 
tive as Revelation. The Koran itself was not edited in a 
definitive form till about 650. But it was freely charged 
that certain Suras were forged, as certain " tradition " was 
forged. Not till the tenth century could orthodox Islam 
come to any agreement as to what was orthodox. Then, 
however, the varying opinions were sifted and there thus 
came into existence the formal Ijma or Agreement, which 
since then, because Mohammed said that the community 
could never agree in error, has been the third work recog- 
nized as authoritative. The fourth work in the religious 
literature is a body of reasoning in regard to doctrinal 
points.^ There was from the beginning more or less dis- 
agreement as to the interpretation of verses of the Koran, 
the earhest probably involving the question as to man's free 
will. This was not altogether a purely theological point. 
Kadar or fatalism was upheld by the Omayyads of Damas- 
cus as a principle conducive to obedience; the powers that 
be are the powers divinely ordained. By a lucus a non those 
opposed to fatalism were called Kadarites, while those up- 
holding this doctrine were known as Jabarites, believers in 
blind compulsive power. The Kadarites represented, how- 
ever, a pietistic strain, not wholly political nor intellectual. 
The question of free will ^ was one of several arising from 
discussions coming into the church after the founder's 
death. Another of similar sort was the question wliCcher 

iThe Kiyas: Books of practical instruction (Fikh) were based 
on this larger literature. 

2 God leaves it to man to follow His guidance ; who forgets Him 
He forgets and abandons. One should pray " guard and guide me." 
Man's dependence on God is implied. Mohammed's earlier view 
inclined to free will but later, according to Grimme, he believed in 
greater dependence, eventually adopting the view of crass predesti- 
nation. But see the next note. 



THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED 477 

God himself was free, or so bound by justice that he was 
obliged to submit to limitations. The early (eighth cen- 
tury) Mutazilite school argued that God was under the neces- 
sity of sending prophets to save man ; that pious people must 
be recompensed for their suffering; and that even animals 
were to be recompensed hereafter; in short, the justice of 
God limits His power. Virtually, therefore, they taught that 
while man was free ^ God was not. God's will is not good 
as such; He must command what is good. The same reli- 
gious philosophy derided the anthropomorphism of vulgar 
belief in God's hands and feet, etc. Mutazilites thus opposed 
the Hanbalite religious doctors, who represented the ex- 
treme wing of conservatism and to whom a purely spiritual 
God was contradictory of Mohammed's words (taken lit- 
erally). Other later problems, discussed by the philosophers 
of the eighth and ninth centuries, were whether God had 
attributes and whether there was a natural law. In the 
tenth century, the Asharites renounced the rationalism of 
the Mutazilites and since the twelfth century the views of 
the latter have been given up by the orthodox. Thus 
the view of al~Ashari (832-933), who followed Hanbal, 
still prevails, according to which laws of nature are really 
habits ; the absence of sunlight is not what makes a shadow, 
but it is a thing created. " A blind man may stand in 
China and see a gnat in Spain " ; the eye may perceive a 
smell or a sound as well as see. The chief points held by 
the orthodox Sunni, who follow al-Ashari, are that God's 
word is eternal (uncreated) and that there will be a cor- 
poreal resurrection. Asharism also holds that the individual 
is not wholly free nor absolutely fated ; God is omnipotent. 
They deny the Mutazilite notion of a place hereafter be- 
tween heaven and hell. 

1 Texts of the Koran (xviii. 28; xxxviii. 25) allude to "him who 
will believe " and " desire leading astray." On the other hand, x. 
100 says that none may believe except with God's permission. 
These are all Mecca texts. The last is a statement of fact; the 
first two are casual allusions from which only a theologian would 
draw any theory of free-will. 



47^ THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

In contrast with Judaism, the original model of Islam, 
every man is his own priest and deals directly with his maker, 
supplicating God for assistance and for forgiveness. Mo- 
hammed himself taught that he, and other apostles, could 
mitigate God's justice by appearing as an intercessor and 
this doctrine was but the prototype of the later intercessory 
character of saints, to whom Mohammedans in general are 
as devoted, and of whom they make the same substitute for 
divinity, as other religionists. As the Sicilian or Russian 
invokes his patron saint and as such a saint is sometimes 
only a new form of an old god, so the patron god or saint 
of village and province becomes to the Mohammedan the 
divine power whom he invokes for rain or safety. Yet no 
need is felt for priestly mediators and no sacrifice is required 
except as part of the ancient Hajj. As contrasted with 
Judaism also Islam recognizes no chosen people ; it is a demo- 
cratic religion making converts everywhere. As a matter 
of course many Mohammedans nowadays neglect devotions 
and may go to the mosque but twice a year; but few reli- 
gions can count so many genuine devotees. 

Islam is as different from Mohammedanism as modern 
Christianity is from the teaching of Christ. A whole millen- 
nium of new ideas has been grafted upon it. Mohammed 
himself has been converted into a sinless being who per- 
formed miracles. The Sunna of the first three centuries is 
admittedly authoritative, but the orthodox school rejects 
the " degenerate " teaching of later days adopted by the 
Shiites, who, in accordance with their view that Ali received 
and passed on the divine succession, incline to a mysticism 
which has led to a pantheistic nihilism. A paganism modi- 
fied by Gnosticism has inspired this branch of the church. 
The Nusairiah sect even treats the holy family of Islam as 
nature-gods. A marked feature here is the absolute obedi- 
ence demanded of the religious community to its head, sim- 
ilar to the Guru-cult of India, the head being regarded as 
representative of, or even identical with, God. Thus the 
notorious Assassins yielded implicit obedience to their Old 



THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED 479 

Man and the modern Babis and Bahis regard their founders 
as divine. In part, this has come from an early adoption of 
Christian asceticism and cehbacy, which introduced into 
Islam the pious ascetics called Wanderers, " male and fe- 
male," ^ whose exaggeration of confidence in God led to an 
attitude of indifference and quietism. Clothed in siif, coarse 
wool, these ascetics, who soon became mystics, were known 
as Sufis. As early as the seventh century they adopted 
un-Mohammedan (Neo-Platonic?) ideas, became "drunk 
with divinity,'* identified the individual with God, gave 
themselves up to religious ecstasy and contemplation, and 
interpreting the Koran allegorically, appeared virtually Indie 
or Hellenic rather than Mohammedan. With the Kalenders 
or Dervishes they reject moral laws and even court disap- 
proval. Ethically these heretics " pass beyond good and 
evil " ; to them, *' love alone is true religion." 

Before the tenth century the protest had been made that 
" dirt is not religion." Although physical dirt was meant, 
moral dirt might have been intended. All this mixture of 
late philosophy and its resultant pantheism was repudiated 
once for all by al-Ghazali (died 1109), who had himself 
been a philosopher and Moslem doctor but is known to his- 
tory rather as the " destroyer of philosophers." He op- 
posed both the dogmatism and hair-splitting of the Sunni 
schoolmen and the gross heresy of the Sufites, in that he 
rejected their pantheism, though he admitted into orthodox 
belief a certain amount of ethical mysticism. He thus be- 
came known as the Regenerator of Religion. His real serv- 
ice was that " he turned the church from theological wran- 
gling to the spirituality of a unifying faith," and gave it on 
its orthodox side something of Shiite liberality.^ On the 

1 Compare the Buddhist "Wanderers," who may have served as 
models, though Christian examples were not lacking. Sufiism re- 
flects different " sources," because they teach the same thing. No 
historical connexion has been proved with Indian thought, but it 
may have existed. Balkh was then a seat of Buddhism. 

2 The Agreement (above) had already given binding force to a 
mysticism foreign to the founder, a cult of saints, which he re- 



48o THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

other hand, the Shiites have two traits which lead them far 
afield from Mohammedanism. They have long given up 
any effort to make Islam's missionary spirit express itself 
by submission of its foes and have themselves adopted as 
their motto " caution," or submission to alien authority even 
to the extent of pretended apostasy (taught as a virtue), 
while they wait for the coming of the Guided One or Mahdi, 
that is, the twelfth or hidden Imam, who disappeared in the 
ninth century and will appear, a shadowless, sinless, infalli- 
ble, incarnate, deity. A sect of Shiites called Ismailites end 
the visible line with the seventh instead of the twelfth Imam. 
They founded the African Fatimite dynasty in the tenth 
century. Philosophically they taught that each revealer 
("speaker") of truth surpasses the last, so that there is a 
gradual revelation of the world-spirit ; consequently that their 
Imam Ismail (died ^62) surpassed his predecessor Moham- 
med. They too interpreted the Koran allegorically and re- 
garded literal believers as heretics. Prohibition of wine, 
fast, and pilgrimage are thus nullified. Their belief that 
the Fatimite Caliph Hakim would reveal himself as God 
incarnate is still held by the Druses of Lebanon. The Kho- 
jas of Indian (under Agha Khan) represent this sect; they 
derive from an Assassin of the Fatimite dynasty. The most 
moderate Shiites derive from Zeid (tenth century), great- 
grandson of Hosein ; they recognize any active Aliite as an 
Imam and are tolerant of the Sunnis. They are still found 
in southern Arabia under the name of Zeidites. The Shi- 
ites in general do not oppose Sunna but define Sunna as the 
traditional Way of the Prophet's family, not of his compan- 
ions and their later adherents. Later religious modifica- 
tion sprang up on Arabian soil and was developed by loans 

pudiated, and an extreme asceticism adopted from without. The 
Ijma today still holds the Moslem world to polygamy, facile divorce, 
concubinage, and slavery, in all which the Prophet's own teaching 
improved the ethics of his people but could not anticipate the higher 
views of today. Yet polygamy is allowed only to those able to 
afford it and slavery affects only war-captives, whom it is a merit 
to set free. 



THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED 48 1 

from Aryan sources. Although the Shiah party represents 
that freedom from hteral interpretation and from received 
behef which makes it " hberal," it is, as Goldziher has shown, 
an error to suppose that its character arose in reaction from 
a narrow ortliodoxy. The Shiites arose as a pohtical party 
and when in power were more intolerant than the Sunni. At 
the present time not the Sunni but the Shiites take Sura ix. 
2S (which speaks of unclean unbelievers) literally, some of 
them even " wash the eyes polluted by seeing Europeans." 
The Aliites known as Metawile, around Baalbek, destroy a 
vessel touched by a Christian. On the other hand it cannot 
be said that the Sunni have failed to respond to modern 
liberal views. The Malik school ^ upheld public utility as 
against the normal law and thus made possible the introduc- 
tion of banks and insurance as well as intercession of saints, 
all of which are forbidden (see above) by the Koran. The 
fact is that Bida or innovation if enduring enough becomes 
custom, so that " it became Bida to oppose Bida." Thus 
Mohammed's birthday festival was opposed as late as the 
fifteenth century, but was finally adopted as orthodox. The 
most conservative Mohammedans today are a recent sect 
called Wahabites, of central Arabia, a reactionary body op- 
posing the use of the rosary, tobacco, coffee, etc. In gen- 
eral Islam is today a tolerant religion ^ and its fatalism 
rightly understood is the expression of resignation to God's 
will. It is of course pessimistic, but so is Christianity. 
Both believe that the world is evil. 

The value of Mohammedanism lies in its influence with 
rude races. As it represented God to the Arabs, so today 

'-^ This and the Hanbal school already mentioned are not sects 
but schools of religious law, of which four are orthodox, the 
Hanifites, Malikites, Shafiites, and Hanbalites. Traditionally Islam 
has 73 sects but this is only to make it superior to Judaism and 
Christianity which, according to the same myth, boast 71 and 72 
sects. 

2 According to Hurgronje, the "faithful" may even include non- 
Moslem people. The Moslem Church never had an Inquisition 
though more liberal philosophical thought coincided with greater 
intolerance. This is ascribed to late Zoroastrian influence. 



482 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

it is an effective means of betterment to those who stand on 
a low intellectual and ethical level. Its prohibition of in- 
toxicants and simple creed make it a useful educator in 
Africa; its monotheism stands in pleasing contrast with 
Hindu polytheism. It is at its best when it has least politi- 
cal power. 

Far removed from Mohammed is the " Mohammedan " 
Babi movement. It reverts to the theory of gradual pro- 
gressive revelation. Mirza Ali Mohammed of Shiraz, b. 
1820, believed he was the Imam and Bab (door) of salva- 
tion. He adopted the mystic combination of letters taught 
by the earlier Hurifis, preached the brotherhood of man and 
equality of woman, and was put to death in 1850. He was 
followed by the Bahi, who died in 1892 and was succeeded 
by Abbas Effendi. While the Bab is, in a way, a reform of 
a sect of Islam, the world-religion of the Bahis has no claim 
to be anything except a Persian form of mixed religious 
creeds, mystic philosophies, and social reforms. Similar 
tendencies have produced Mahdi religions in India, such as 
the Ahmediyya, a modern sect aiming at universality. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

E. H. Palmer, The Qur'an (Koran), translated in Sacred Books 

of the East^ vi, ix. 
T. Noldeke, Geschichte des Qoran, 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1909. 
Ignaz Goldziher, Mohammed and Islam, translated by Mrs. 

Seelye, New Haven, 1917. 

D. B. Macdonald, Aspects of Islam, New York, 191 1. 

C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mohammedanism, New York, 1916. 
T. W. Arnold, Preaching^ of Islam, 2nd ed., London, 1913. 
H. Grimme, Mohammed, Miinster, 1895. 
R. A. Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam, London, 1914. 

E. G. Browne, Materials for the Study of the Bahi Religion, 

London, 19 18. 



CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 

GREEK RELIGION 

About sixteen hundred b. c., Greece was over-run by Cretan 
invaders of higher culture (Minoan), who in turn were 
overcome by tribes of Aryan origin (Achaeans) from about 
1500 to iioo (Dorian invasion). The original inhabitants, 
" Pelasgian," formed a third element. Another stream of 
Aryans passed from the North into Asia Minor, and many 
northern tribes conquered by Achaeans or Dorians may 
have been their Aryan predecessors. It is impossible to dis- 
tinguish the Pelasgian from the Cretan Mediterranean type. 
The latter, and probably the former, had idols and wor- 
shipped a great mother-goddess of productivity rather than 
a sky-god, while the Ayrans worshipped the sky-god as 
chief deity and were less advanced in religious art. Both 
races probably worshipped ancestors. In general, the Medi- 
terranean type of religion was more magical and mystical ; 
its spirits were, as compared with the Aryan type, less frank 
and human. By the former, divinity was worshipped more 
as a goddess or life-potency ; by the latter, as a superhuman 
man; to the former, the divine was of earth; to the latter, 
of heaven. After settling in Greece, the x^chaeans adopted 
many of the deities of the conquered, who may have in- 
cluded tribes of the Achaeans' own race, as subordinate fig- 
ures, though it was a long time before the Cyprian goddess of 
love, the Thracian god of war, and the goddess of agri- 
culture felt quite at home on Olympus, where the Aryan 
sky-god lived with his court. The Aryans as they set- 
tled down adopted magical rites to aid agriculture, in 
which as a host of invading soldiers they at first felt little 
interest, probably deeming farming the task of women and 

483 



484 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

slaves. More interest was shown in herding and their chief 
productivity-gods were of this type, Apollo, Hermes, and 
Poseidon, whom they brought with them from northern 
Greece, as they did Dionysos, the god of general fertility. 
As such the last was not at first esteemed very highly out- 
side of his Thracian home, though afterwards, adopted as 
god of mystic madness induced by intoxication, he was 
converted into a " son of the sky-god." In the earlier 
period, the sky-god himself was all the god the Aryans 
needed for agriculture, as he sent rain, so that he united the 
conception of a god ruling in the sky with that of one gov- 
erning life underground.^ 

Since the mystery-religion of Greece and the worship of 
female powers came earlier than the Aryan religion, Greek 
religion as a whole is often mistakenly represented as evolv- 
ing from the lower to the higher form. No greater mistake 
can be made. There was no such evolution. The Aryan 
invaders, Achaeans and Dorians, simply adopted and adapted 
some of the lower elements native to the race they conquered, 
or long since brought into Greece from Crete, some parts 
of which may have come originally from Egypt. No fetish 
or ghost ever developed into Zeus.^ It is characteristic of 
the Achaean religion that it had neither totemism nor 
tribal initiation, nor did its worshippers stand in fear of 
ghosts and ghouls. It was a virile man's rehgion, recog- 
nizing women-deities of love and domestic art, not as dark 
earth-potencies, but as shining celestial spirits. There is 
not the slightest evidence that it came from Crete like that 
of the preceding race in the Peloponnesus. But Zeus, 
though originally so, was no longer the " bright " Sky, any 
more than the Teutonic Thor was Thunder. He had al- 

1 Hence Zeus georgos (like Poseidon georgos, below), whence, 
eventually, " St. George." 

2 For various conflicting views as to the aborigines see Ridgeway, 
Origin of Tragedy, Cambridge, 1910, who believes that the Greek 
aborigines were akin to the Lycians (the Achaeans being Celts) ; 
Farnell, The Higher Aspects of Greek Religion, London, 1911; 
and Leaf, Homer and History, London, 1915. Zeus was a moun- 
tain-god of Olympus and elsewhere as well as a god of the sky. 



GREEK RELIGION 485 

ready become a family-man and chief of various clan- 
gods.^ The naturalized Achaeans set beside him as his 
" wife " the dethroned female deity of Argos, Hera, arche- 
type of monogamous union as '' sacred marriage." As his 
brother they took Poseidon, who in his own place and for 
some time after his adoption had been as important as 
Zeus. Less clear to the Achaeans was the form of another 
" brother," called Hades, to whom was assigned the under- 
world, about which the Achaeans troubled themselves very 
little. But to this brother of Zeus they gave as wife 
Persephone, daughter of the corn-mother, Demeter, who 
may have been an Aryan-renamed goddess native to the orig- 
inal inhabitants, or an original Mother Earth, interpreted 
after the fashion of the farming population. She, too, was 
not originally an Olympian but as goddess of the earth and 
tilth and above all as Mother she became the lofty type of 
wifely motherhood ; ^ until her image, spiritual and material, 
blended with that of the Christian Mother. 

As Ares of Thrace and Aphrodite of Cyprus were called 
son and daughter, respectively, of Zeus, so Apollo, " dear 
to Zeus," was made his son, whose sister, like Apollo armed 
with bow and arrow, was Artemis,^ goddess of life and 
death. As daughter of Zeus also is recognized Athene, 
goddess of art and skill at home and in the field, chief deity 
of Troy as well as chief goddess of the Achaeans and of 
Athens. Kronos, an old god of field and harvest, later con- 

1 A. B. Cook, Zeus, vol, i, London, 1914, seeks to show that the 
Greek Zeus was still the sky as in Sios, 'ivbios. He is more success- 
ful in proving that Zeus was not originally sun or stars. As family- 
man Zeus is associated with the family-cult as guardian of the 
home. 

2 " There is nothing greater than a mother," says a poet of the 
fourth century. Family-life is religiously guarded. On the sacred- 
ness of marriage and the possibility of a mystic religious element in 
the early rite, see Farnell, op. cit., p. 3of. Adulterers sinned against 
Zeus and Hera and were excluded from religious precincts. Zeus 
guarded the honour of the family and the father's right. 

3 Artemis is a type of the vague female potency of life anthropo- 
morphized as goddess but remaining ever unsullied. She has no 
organic connexion with Apollo. With her were identified others of 
her type, Britomartis, of Crete, Ma, of Cappadocia, etc. 



486 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

fused with Chronos, was made father of Zeus. The figure 
of Hestia (hearth, hearth-fire), who scarcely has personaHty 
in Homer, becomes in Hesiod the daughter of Demeter and 
Kronos. Hephaistos, called son of Zeus, was the local fire- 
god of Lemnos, though representing the forge-fire rather 
than the hearth. While the nature-elements in Poseidon 
and Hephaistos are veiled, nature-worship comes out more 
clearly in the direct worship of natural objects such as 
water in springs and rivers (the Alphaios, etc.), or of 
(the muses) hills and springs, in Thrace and Boeotia. Pan 
in Arcadia represents a cult of land and herds introduced 
quite late (fifth century) into Athens. Holy stones and 
posts, destined to become idols and gods, were perhaps 
adopted from the original inhabitants, such as the stone 
Hermes, originally a figure not unlike that of Priapos. 
Dryads, who die with the trees, are later personifications 
of sacred trees, such as ash, oak, and cypress ; especially the 
laurel in Tempe and the palm in Delos. In Boeotia, the 
aboriginal cult of serpents was connected with that of 
Asklepios, also with the souls of the dead. Zeus himself, 
affected by these lower cults, takes the forms of animals, 
as Dionysos takes the form of a bull or goat, and other 
gods either take animal forms or have animal characteristics, 
Apollo being associated with the dolphin, Demeter appear- 
ing with a horse's mane, etc. In such phenomena, the 
bull-form is regarded as the god himself, and in the 
case of aboriginal deities, this may have been the first 
form. 

Among the Greeks a tendency is observable to regulate 
groups of spirits by extending the reach of the sacred num- 
ber three. Three days of mourning and a threefold invo- 
cation of the dead give a sacred character to the number, 
which is then applied to sacred or divine characters. So 
arise groups of three Graces, Fates, Eumenides, Hours, and 
thrice three Muses. These triads are usually female though 
sometimes male, but they never lead to the conception of a 
trinity. Thus Homer has three great brother gods, Zeus, 



GREEK RELIGION 4^7 

Poseidon, Hades. Zeus, Hera, and Athene or Apollo make 
a triad of a family (Hera takes the place of Dione, Juno). 
But the advent of the high Olympian gods introduced by 
the Achaeans reduced most of the earlier local goddesses to 
mythical, quasi historical characters. Cassandra and Helen 
were perhaps originally, or later took the place of, such local 
goddesses, with temples and images of their own. Others, 
as has been said, became forms of greater goddesses, as 
Kallisto, the Bear-maid, became a form (name) of Artemis 
Kalliste, just as local heroes were either absorbed in or be- 
came titles of great gods, Zeus Agamemnon, Meilichios, 
Philios, etc., unless, indeed, their legend was too savage to 
be adopted, when, like Tantalos, Sisyphos, and others, they 
became mere types of barbarism, historic characters meet- 
ing a deserved fate. Some of these were perhaps actual 
survivals of Cretan dominion in southern Greece. 

Like the Roman Indigitamenta, there were also Powers 
of one office, whose duty was later absorbed by the higher 
divinities. Increase, Auxo, Thallo, Karpo, and such genii 
of fruitfulness found among all the Indo-Europeans prob- 
ably belong to Achaean as well as to Mediterranean cults. 
Some appear as heroes, like Triptolemos, the ploughman or 
Erechtheus the ploughman, connected with Erichthonios, 
hero and father of fruitful Kekrops, a serpent-tailed hero 
as god of crops. Iphigeneia is by name (the spirit of) 
animal fruitfulness, whose cult was lost in that of Artemis. 
Probably older than Apollo are thus latros, Paian (puri- 
fier), and lason, and the Thessalian Chiron. They are 
simply " the healer " in one form or under one name or an- 
other, possibly original hero-spirits in some cases. In some, 
there is only the personification of emotion (Fear, Love) or 
abstractions, Ploutos, Wealth, Hygieia, Health; Tyche, 
Fortune; Eirene, Peace; Themis, Justice. These powers 
tend to become mere attributes of gods of greater calibre, as 
local gods m.erge with and help to amplify the names of 
great gods, for example, Zeus Lykeios and Apollo Lykeios, 
who through a miisunderstanding unite Zeus with the god 



488 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

called Lykos in Boeotia and Arcadia.^ An excellent exam- 
ple of such a combined divinity is the death-goddess of 
Homer, Persephone, who was united with Despoina and 
with Hekate and even with Artemis as local goddesses of 
the same sort current in Arcadia, and yet was united as well 
with the Maiden (Kore) or vegetable divinity. Environ- 
ment again makes of a tribe's chief god another character 
when the scene shifts. For this reason the fertility- and 
water-god Poseidon coming from the north, like Apollo, 
becomes a sea-god when the tribe worshipping Poseidon 
comes to settle by the sea. Early epithets name him georgos 
and phytalmios, an agricultural plant-god, and his " horse " 
form is derived not from billows as sea-chargers but from- 
the cultivation of horses. His cult even in Laconia, where 
he is Demeter's husband, was older than that of Zeus and in 
Athens older than that of Pallas Athene, the culture-goddess. 
Hera herself was a goddess of cattle and of well-watered 
meadows, for which reason she is a water-goddess in Argos 
and still bears in Homer the title " cow-eyed," while the 
pomegranate, emblem of fertility, is sacred to her, and Hebe 
(Spring-time) is her daughter. Some scholars, however, 
think 2 that she originally represented the moon as a horned 
goddess, patron of agriculture, and a deity especially of 
women, as the moon often is. More probably she was the 
greatest female-power of her state and as such became 
" wife " of Zeus (in place of Dione) as well as moon. 

The animal-form of a god is, if anything, ruder than the 
vegetable form, as cattle-raising usually precedes the settled 
life of agriculture. Hence some of the rudest religious 
types belong in this category, such as that of Plermes, al- 
ready mentioned, a god of animal productivity. The 
Homeric hymn sings him as a thief of cattle ; he is also the 
slayer of the herdsman Argos ; early art represents him with 
a ram's head. Herodotus tells us that the symbol of pro- 

1 Lykos is the wolf (god), but lykeios is light-god (lyke). 

2 Miss Harrison suggests that Hera is the same word as English 
Year ! Leaf. op. cit., p. 262, note. 



GREEK RELIGION 4^9 

ductivity was especially his. He was to Argos what Pan 
was to Arkadia. Probably he was originally a local god of 
productivity in general; hence his chthonic character, his 
office of psychopomp, and his control of riches (metal 
wealth) found in the earth. He guides and guards. He 
guards both graves and paths and marks, with his Hermes- 
stone, the paths dividing property. As God of wealth also 
he is god of the market-place (Mercurius to the Roman) 
and of cleverness and trickery. As a tricky god he fathers 
Autolykos, grandfather of Odysseus, who inherits his sly- 
ness. The later athletes also honoured him as god of the 
tricks helpful to wrestlers. In many respects Hermes is 
thus a little counterpart of Apollo, also a god of shepherds 
and cattle-raisers and f ruitfulness, whose relations with the 
nymphs (like that of Krishna in India) date from this con- 
ception of him. An early symbol of Apollo is the goat or 
ram, whence he is identified with Karneios, a local ram-god. 
But he is also an agricultural god, who introduces or favours 
fruit-culture and bee-culture. He overcame Hyakinthos, 
that is, his cult took over that of a local god of that name. 
He became also a sea-god of fishes typified as the dolphin- 
form known in Crete and brought from Crete into Elis as 
the Delphinios Apollo, whose title was taken by Delphi, 
where Apollo assumed the oracular powers originally be- 
longing to the earth-goddess, and killed her snake-guardian 
Pytho. Finally in Delos Apollo became a sun-god, so that 
the cult of the older Helios is lost in that of Apollo, as was 
that of the medicinal god Phoibos and other local gods. 
Apollo's rise to the position of sun-god stands parallel to 
that of his sister Artemis to the position of moon-goddess 
from the earlier status of a goddess of animal-productivity. 
Apollo came to Rome as "healer," medicus, that is, as 
Phoibos. 

It is clear that the early Greek divinities do not arise from 
moral contemplation. They are themselves in story im- 
moral or unmoral. They are not abstractions, nor usually 
Numina, but are anthropomorphic deities. No idea is ap- 



490 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

parent of a god who omnipotently and justly rules the world. 
The gods themselves injure and deceive men. Yet in the 
conception of divinity foreshadowed by Moira, Fate, there is 
a rapid growth toward that of an over-ruling Providence. 
The amalgamation of local gods into one figure tends to 
increase the grandeur of that figure and with the growth 
of ethical ideals the idea of a god corresponding to those 
ideals begins to emerge. As receiver and absorber of the 
benefits thus bestowed upon the gods by more civiHzed men, 
Zeus, the guardian of the town, stands foremost, as his po- 
sition at the head of the pantheon made it natural that he 
should be most prominent ethically as he was physically. 
He is themistios, the god of right order. He is not above 
Fate, which appears as a blind impersonal power; but he 
orders the world, sees all, notes wrong and right, upholds 
the family, befriends the stranger, aids the suppliant, and 
is the saviour and purifier of men, as he is the giver of life, 
happiness, and power. Later, Zeus becomes a world-prin- 
ciple ; in the third century he is even ** interpreted " as a 
ghost (doctrine of Euhemerus), but in the earlier religion 
he is a humanized spirit of nature, moral as man. 

In Homer, the cult of such gods as he recognizes appears 
to be one of great simplicity. Every feast was a sacrifice. 
Temples and shrines were known, but the former might be 
a mere grove or a mountain-top and the shrine was not nec- 
essarily in a fixed place. Anywhere one might build an 
altar and sacrifice animals to a god. Altars, idols, and sym- 
bols of divinity belonged also to the Cretan cult, as did the 
worship of trees, stones, and animals. There was no 
Achaean priesthood, though professional priests existed; 
later came also priestesses. Priests were prayer-makers 
and prophets, holy men, but not celibate ; there was no 
priestly caste. To honour the gods, communicate with them, 
and to win their help or avert misfortune were the objects 
of prayer, from which at first the formal elements of thanks- 
giving and praise seem to have been absent, though at a later 
date fully recognized. Even the great gods acted as house- 



GREEK RELIGION 49^ 

guardians, as in India (not in Rome). Sacrifices were an- 
nual and occasional. Human sacrifice to Zeus and other 
gods is mentioned in legend ^ and in early times was common 
to the mainland, to Crete and to the islands of the Aegean, 
where children as well as men were dismembered and de- 
voured in magical rites to increase the strength of the god. 
Wine was also poured out to a god on taking an oath, at 
meals, and on other special occasions. The early gods were 
not supposed as a class to be concerned with moral acts, 
but by the seventh century purification was demanded by 
them in the case of murder ; and ceremonial purification was 
also religiously expected after childbirth, or when one was 
initiated into religious mysteries. Sacrifice, scape-goats, or 
water-ablution were the means employed for purification, 
which was at first only ritualistic. The will of the gods was 
ascertained not only by oracles but through victims, dreams, 
flames, birds, snakes, bones, etc. In classical times the 
priests were State ofiicials and the State religion was largely 
a formal observance of rites, including the oath and curse 
(which was rather magical than religious).^ Months and 
days were dedicated to certain gods. Thus the first and 
seventh day of every month were Apollo's. Yet there was 
no intimate connexion with the Olympian gods. Even 
later, "to love God would be improper," says Aristotle. 
Morality was supported more by appeals to the right order 
of the universe or the right way (Themis, Dike) as abstract 
divine powers, than to the gods of Olympos. Only the 
Fates, even in Hesiod, are moral punishers of crime.^ The 

1 At the funeral of Patroklos (II. xxiii. 175) Achilles sacrificed on 
his pyre horses, dogs and Trojans, apparently to accompany the 
shade into the next world. Yet the worship of the dead belongs 
rather to primitive civilization than to that of the Achaeans. 

2 The curse operated without divine interference ; but it was itself 
a sort of spirit, as a potency which could be invoked. It belonged, 
however, especially to the powers below, though in the care of Zeus. 

3 Sin in Homer is chiefly a violation of ethical rules, failure to 
honor parents or guests or suppliants or to keep an oath ; sin against 
the gods comes from neglect in serving them, but violation of ethics 
brings divine punishment. 



492 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

chief crime was hyhris, insolent over-stepping of one's rights. 
In Hesiod, Justice includes regard for others' rights and 
morality is based on this as a divine power. Justice is called 
the daughter of Zeus. So to be law-abiding, says Hesiod, is 
the best thing to pray for. Later, the gods became the ideals 
born of advanced civilization. The State came into being 
out of a union of clans (the beginning of this is already 
Homeric), and accordingly the gods themselves became 
more universal, though clan-, club- and family-gods were 
retained. Even in Homer's time, Zeus and others had be- 
come general Greek gods and various clans united in wor- 
ship at one temple, which drew around it the beginnings of 
a town. Thus the city was felt as a whole religiously; its 
god was regarded as citizen of it, sometimes as its ances- 
tor. Each religious centre had its own individuality as had 
the clan. Later State-worship, with its temples, proces- 
sions, statues, etc., gave a united religious aspect to Greek 
political life, and this conception of a religious State made 
easy the expansion of religion into a broader, universal 
religious brotherhood. 

The community-religion of the Greek made it possible to 
allow one victim to represent the whole community in a 
vicarious sacrifice and it gave patriotism a religious signifi- 
cance. Who defended his land, defended his gods; con- 
versely, who kept out foreign gods, was a patriot. But when 
the Persian war made Greece conscious of itself as a whole, 
Zeus became Hellenios, a moral god of all Greece now pro- 
claimed as such. The Delphic oracle, too, helped to make 
all Greece one religious community. The Homeric divinity 
was already a protector of the suppliant and stranger and 
the god of friendship. Mercy and justice and compassion 
were his traits, as humanity and art were dear to Athene, 
and as Apollo inspired music and patronized philosophy. 
Thus religion, which had affected Greek life from the be- 
ginning, grew even more intimately connected with it, in- 
separable from its art and its philosophy. 

On the other hand, the old cult of lower gods and ghosts 



GREEK RELIGION 493 

was taken over by the State but was modified by it. Apo- 
tropaic rites (of riddance) were made part of a higher cult 
of tendance by retaining the former as only part of the lat- 
ter. A rite of fear became a joyous festival. Yet the 
chthonic spirits could not be wholly avoided. The savage 
view persisted. They were identified more or less with 
heroes as good ghosts, or were, as evil ghosts, placated with 
offerings and then sent away by the use of pitch and buck- 
thorn or a good beating (as in Greenland, etc.). Sacrifice 
was made to them at night by persons dressed in black; 
while, to serve the Olympian gods, sacrifice was made by 
day by worshippers in white. 

Sacrifices to the upper gods were based on the notion that 
they would gladly share in the meal of their worshippers and 
that to offer good things to them would coerce them 
to do good to the worshipper in turn. This is the pre- 
dominant mixed note in the Homeric sacrifice. Slaughter of 
animals, bull, goat, sheep, or swine, was for the purpose 
of providing such a common meal. But the victim also 
imparted to the worshippers who ate of it communion with 
the god. The rites differed according to locality, but in 
general the victim was adorned with flowers and fillets and 
its horns were gilded. An altar-brand was plunged by way 
of consecration (communion) into a basin of water and all 
were baptized with this holy-water. Barley-groats salted 
were passed around and strewn on the victim and thrown 
into the fire, where also was thrown hair cut from the vic- 
tim's brow and dedicated to the god. In solemn silence 
the victim's throat was cut; in the case of an ox or other 
large victim it was stunned first. The blood of the victim 
was thrown on the altar and part of the flesh was burned 
for the god ; libations were made of wine, milk, and honey. 

The sacrifice to the lower gods, to heroes, and to the dead 
was made by pouring the blood into the earth (a trench) 
and the entire victim was burned or buried or got rid of by 
casting the body into water. Animals unfit for food, such 
as dogs, were sometimes slain for this sacrifice ; in any case 



494 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

the worshippers did not partake of the food of the dead. 
For ghosts, beans and eggs cast on the ground served as 
sacrifice and pigs cast into a pit fed such ghosts materialized 
as serpents. As the backbone of a man was thought to be- 
come a serpent, snakes were generally regarded as new 
forms of defunct men. Offerings of fruit, honey, milk, 
especially cakes shaped like animals, were made to the lower 
powers, to whom usually no wine was offered, as this was 
reserved for the Olympians. At some altars only bloodless 
sacrifice was made. A repugnance against all bloody sacri- 
fice manifested itself by the seventh century and became a 
trait of Pythagorean and Orphic religion. 

Omens were taken from the thighs of the victim, wrapped 
in fat and consumed. Oracles were supposed to be divine 
utterances at certain places, the best known being that of 
Zeus at Dodona^ and of Apollo at Delphi and Delos. 
Some heroes also had oracular shrines, such as Trophonius 
at Lebadeia in Boeotia ; Amphiaraos near Thebes. 

Chief of the earth-goddesses was Demeter, whose cult, to- 
gether with that of Dionysos, both strange to Homer, in- 
troduced new elements into Greek religion. The Demeter 
cult, perhaps derived from the Mediterranean cult, which 
exalts a Mother-goddess, began probably with sympathetic 
magic ({'€ Kve), but became a sort of sacred drama in which 
were enacted scenes from the life of the sorrowing god- 
dess, who mourned her lost daughter (the vegetable life 
of the world), Kore or Persephone, the worshippers sorrow- 
ing with her in a spectacle, carried out in darkness. She 
descended into Hades to find the lost Kore, whose re- 
vival in spring vegetation typified to the worshipper a 
resurrection, in which he came to share, as the idea of 
union with the divinity was imposed upon the primitive cult. 
This later idea, however, originated in the Dionysiac cult, 
which under Orphic influence became spiritual and ethi- 
cal. Association of Bacchus with the Eleusis cult was 

1 Here Zeus himself gave oracles from his oaks (compare the 
Druids). The oak itself may have been the first god. 



GREEK RELIGION 495 

a secondary stage. The whole cult included, besides, 
the more primitive animism of the natives, which had 
intrenched itself in the life of the people too deeply to 
be given up. For the most part the old rites of riddance 
were therefore, as has been said, turned into decent reli- 
gious rites in honour of respectable gods. Thus in its 
primitive form the " Diasia of Zeus " was a March " fes- 
tival " of cursing, marked by killing pigs at night for ghosts. 
It is doubtful, however, whether the Anthesteria of Dio- 
nysos in February-March was originally, as some think, a 
placation of ghosts raised by prayer (an All Souls' Day). 
The first fruits were offered to spirits in May-June at the 
Thargelia, supposed to be a festival of Apollo but really a 
purification by means of a human scape-goat called the 
pharmakos. There was a rite wholly for women in Oc- 
tober-November called the festival of the Thesmophoria, 
in which pigs were cast into a chasm in honour of Euboulos, 
who had vanished underground with Demeter's daughter. 
The remains of the pigs, such as had not been eaten by the 
snakes (i. e. ghosts), formed a sort of fertilizer, being placed 
on fallow ground to make crops grow with a " fair birth." 
These festivals rid house and town of the spirits after 
they had received their annual tendance. They correspond 
to the Roman placation ceremonies called Feralia and 
Lupercalia, in which, as a fertility-charm, women were hit 
with the skin of goats, animals sacrificed to spirits. Evil 
spirits impair fertility and purification is to be pure (free) 
of spirits. The Achaeans showed no regard for such rites 
at first, yet they gradually absorbed them, as they did the 
local gods. The two cults, of kindly Olympians and of 
frowsy ghosts, trees, and serpents, both revert to prehis- 
toric times. Probably the reverence paid to trees, running 
water, sky-stones, and similar phenomena was an element 
common to Achaean and Mediterranean religion; while 
reverence paid to heroes of the past was certainly not con- 
fined to the latter, though a settled people holds in longer 
remembrance the local monuments of their dead. Mediter- 



49^ THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

ranean burial, as opposed to Achaean cremation, was also 
a factor of importance. It is perhaps too commonly as- 
sumed that burial implies greater regard for life beyond the 
grave than does cremation; but India teaches that both 
methods of disposing of the dead may be practised syn- 
chronously, withal at a time when great regard was paid to 
the life hereafter. Yet the material presence of a grave, 
in the shape of a mound over a body known to be buried 
there, conserves a memory for centuries and tends of itself 
to convert a dead hero into a living divinity. 

Other ghosts regarded as spirits have been exposed by 
modern scholars.^ Thus the Erinyes have been shown to be 
at first avenging spirits, demanding vengeance, not food. 
Bird-like ghosts are Sirens and the Keres. Other spirits 
are doubtful. Thus the Winds are sometimes treated as 
perturbed ghosts, for whom black sacrificial animals were 
buried, such as Harpies, and sometimes as heavenly spirits, 
to whom white sheep were sacrificed. Stormy winds natu- 
rally appear in one role ; kindly breezes in another. So in 
India (and in Zorastrianism) "good" and "bad" winds 
were recognized. Pigs that root in the ground naturally 
belong to ghosts, who fertilize land covered with the flesh 
and blood of swine. Sacrifices to the dead and to under- 
ground spirits are found among savages and must be dis- 
tinguished from fertility-rites based on sympathetic magic. 
These latter hold up to nature what is to be imitated, at 
first drastically, then more symbolically, realistic action yield- 
ing to implication ; lewd behaviour and language taking the 
place of magical performance. 

All the lower spirits, like the higher, tend to become less 
animal in form. The Erinyes lose their wings and become 
one with the goddesses, ministers of justice, called the 

1 See especially Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to Greek Religion, 
Cambridge, 1903. Miss Harrison's later (1913) work, Themis 
(from magic to Olympus), assumes too much and shows less judg- 
ment than her Prolegomena, though this work also is based on an 
implied evolution of a feministic religion into a cult of male deities 
(a decadence, as Miss Harrison regards it). 



GREEK RELIGION 497 

Semnal and Eumenides. Artemis appears no longer with 
scales like a fish, Demeter no longer with a mane like a 
horse. The forms of gods honoured by the Achaeans 
tended to make ridiculous the animal-forms revered by the 
natives. Finally the concept of divinity was raised to a 
height where even the humanized gods of the Achaeans, 
still more humanized by the statues that represented them 
as mere men and women, were too gross for philosophy. 
The poets mocked anthropomorphism; the early philoso- 
pher of the sixth century said, " There is One God, not 
like men in mind or body; all of him sees, thinks, and 
hears." ^ This is the '* Zeus however called,'* who is not a 
man but the spiritual power of the universe. 

Concerning man, we hear, at first in Hesiod, of the five 
ages of deterioration through which he has passed from a 
former diviner state. His soul becomes a shadow after 
death in a shadowy world. Man neither fears nor hopes 
much beyond the grave. Only the very wicked are tor- 
mented hereafter ; only a few heroes of old dwell in Elysium. 
But even this is a grace of the gods, a prediction of a later 
salvation by grace. There is as yet no recognition of man's 
dual nature, earth-bound but fitted for divinity, purified by 
loosening the bonds of flesh through asceticism ; no idea of 
sin inherited from a prenatal state; no close relation be- 
tween the moral and the divine. 

Hesiod reflects not only Homer's lore but the mythology 
of Crete and of the world, so to speak. His " birth of 
Zeus " pictures the sword-dancers of Crete and his contest 
of gods and Titans is like an echo of the conflict with 
Tiamat. But such contests are too general and universal 
to make necessary the assumption of a " loan." The old 
order changeth everywhere and the Titans' strife is merely 
a poetic version of the change from savagery to civilization. 
The perpetual strife is then between the gods above and the 

^^This (Orphic) pantheism becomes a belief in a vague Power 
like the primitive potency (without individuality) which character- 
izes the mana-heliei. But the mafia-belief is not a belief in a uni- 
versal, but in an individual, potency. See above, p. i8. 



498 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

powers below, the death of vegetation and of all life, when 
dark and cold oppose light and heat. This drama, too, ap- 
peared in Greece and as an actual (acted) drama of the 
country was introduced into Athens when the country- 
population began to drift into the town. 

After the age of romance and chivalry associated with 
the feudalistic type of society portrayed by Homer, religion, 
as revealed by literature, is a reversion to the homelier side 
which had been more or less ignored.^ At the same time 
questions arose as to the nature of gods and their relation 
with right and justice. So we get cosmologies and a crude 
ethical religion in Hesiod, but these beginnings at least 
paved the way to later religion by introducing a spirit of 
inquiry. On the other hand, the emotional element in re- 
ligion, which had remained hidden among the rites of the 
wilder northern tribes and is almost ignored by Homer, be- 
gins to attain more prominence. Thus religion develops 
along two quite sundered lines, the emotional and the philo- 
sophical, till the former by becoming spiritualized blends as 
mysticism with the latter. 

The first movement away from the traditional gods of 
the aristocratic class was incidental to social change, esteem 
for country life and plebeian gods and the gradual intro- 
duction of country rites into city life. Two cults, as has 
been said, united in the later Eleusinian mysteries, that of 
Demeter, as early as the seventh century, whose loss and 
recovery of her daughter represented the death and revival 
of vegetation, an early tribal mystery afterwards adopted 
by all, and that of Dionysos, the life-giver, whose Thracian 
worshippers, of unknown antiquity, were wild drunken 
devotees seeking union with the god by delirious orgies in 
which they, largely women, devoured the raw flesh of vic- 
tims they had dismembered and identified with the god, 

1 This is probably not wholly due to literary chance. Doubtless 
the homelier religion existed before it was exploited by Hesiod, 
but also economic conditions aided then for the first time the cul- 
ture of fields and of the deities of the fields. So in India agricul- 
tural gods are late because agriculture is later thai^ cattle-Uftin.^. 



GREEK RELIGION 499 

whose very body they assimilated and to whose immortality 
they thus became entitled. By the sixth century a deeper 
significance of this cult, by way of Orphism, was evolved. 
This substituted an emotion of the spirit for the excitement 
of the body ; purity of soul for bodily purification ; mysticism 
for sensuous feeling. This religion was open tO' all, even 
to slaves, and consolidated the worshippers, men and 
women, into a sort of church. It was a personal religion; 
the worshipper was intent on a future life of bliss rather 
than on worldly welfare such as that given by the Olym- 
pians, a life attained by assimilation to the divine nature 
of Zeus as the universal god whose son is Dionysos. Those 
uninitiated must go to a foul hell, till purified they are 
born again. How to overcome death was shown at 
Eleusis ; ^ how to become divine was shown by Orphism. 
This popular Orphic religion, whicli was not, like the 
Eleusinian mysteries, adopted by the State, soon became 
rank with quackery but its essence was pure and its effect 
lasting. 

Greek philosophy was incidentally ethical and religious 
from the beginning. The poets had given cosmologies and 
divine origins. Thales, c. 600 b. c, derived the universe 
from water and declared that God was the " intelligence of 
the world." Anaximander derived the world from the In- 
finite. Pythagoras, of Doric stock and spirit, combined a 
deepening of moral consciousness with metaphysical inquiry. 
He founded a religious-philosophical school, perhaps the 
first of those religious secret societies which attacked the 
naive Achaean Zeus-religion from within the Greek world. 
Behind matter he sought that which gives it form and pro- 
portion and found this in number, which alone, giving di- 
mension, makes a harmonious whole. He predicated num- 
ber not as the type but as the essence of things, the thing 

1 The initiate was moved by the spectacle rather than instructed ; 
"blest is he who has seen these rites." The rise of the deity from 
the underworld became symbolic of lif-e which arose again after 
burial. The original rite was a magical cult preserved in the invo- 
cation " rain, conceive! " Two jars represented heaven and earth. 



500 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

itself; all is number; the soul and music are numbers. 
Later was ascribed to him (probably falsely) the ipse dixit, 
" Unity is Deity.'' From Orphic circles he adopted the be- 
lief in metempsychosis and invariable rotation of activity, 
later a doctrine of the Stoics. He first spoke of the body 
as the prison of the soul; he advocated moral life, purity, 
non-injury to animals ; and founded a religious colony at 
Crotona in Italy, perhaps in the seventh century. In the 
sixth to fifth century Xenophanes, a follower of Anaximan- 
der, railed at current polytheism and opposed it with the doc- 
trine that Being alone is the Ultimate ; the Deity as all-em- 
bracing Being is One. Yet Xenophanes recognized the 
reaHty of plurality and becoming. In this system, which 
predicates the unity of the world, the immanent cause may 
be called God; it is a pantheism rather than a theism. 
Xenophanes also founded a school in Italy, at Elea, whence 
he and his two successors are called the Eleatics. Parmeni- 
des, the first of these, reduced the One and Many to the 
Eternal and Becoming; only that which can be can be 
thought ; there is no non-being ; all thought is of Being. 
This Being, one with thought, has no plurality or change; 
it is infused with creative heat, called light (symbolically 
represented as a female power governing all and mother of 
Eros) opposed to night. The third Eleatic, Zeno, called 
the '* inventor of dialectic " might be called the first Sophist ; 
he denied plurality and change (becoming). Movement is 
impossible ; Achilles can never catch the tortoise ; the arrow 
cannot move, etc. 

Opposed to a school which had thus argued itself into 
such a denial of change or becoming, Heraclitus (c. 460) 
denied Absolute Being. All is Becoming, all flows; or, as 
Buddha also said, all is burning. Original energy, expressed 
by constant change, is both Being and Becoming. Empe- 
docles of Sicily (440) made love and hate two forces 
operative in eternal matter, which, as he was first to state, 
is composed of four elements. In the same century De- 
mocritus assumed atoms acting from necessity as sufficient 



GREEK RELIGION 501 

to explain the universe, which he regarded as godless (he 
degraded gods to air-demons). The atomic theory he took 
from Leucippus and the idea of necessity from Pythagoras ; 
he himself indulged in no cult of demons (as did Pytha- 
goras), but held to a world evolved without divine agency. 
Anaxagoras, who may be said to have planted philosophy 
at Athens, where he was a friend of Pericles and Euripides, 
first set beside matter a divine Intelligence, Nous, as primal 
causality, though he left this Nous inactive thereafter, as 
the philosophic Hindus leave Brahman, who having created 
has done his part and rests. It remained for the Sophists 
to recognize mind as something permanently higher than 
matter, though the Sophists were not of one school, some 
remaining agnostic, some denying an intelligent governing 
principle. 

But, as regards the people at large, apart from philosophy, 
there were, on the one hand, the vulgar, for whom Solon's 
religion doubtless sufficed, " Honour the gods and respect 
your parents " ; and, on the other, those neither vulgar nor 
metaphysical speculators. To them, the cultivated honest 
men, there were two moral laws, one given by legal enact- 
ment or ancient custom and the other the unwritten law of 
nature, which together taught ritual purity, formal service, 
and ethical behaviour. In choosing between the two, the 
conservative chose ancient law ; the liberal, natural law, as 
their guide. But the older credulity was gone. To the 
lyric poets, Zeus was vague ; to Thucydides, oracles were of 
doubtful value. The chief bond between gods and men 
ethically was the maintenance of sobriety, especially in avoid- 
ing insolent assumption of power and wealth when acquisi- 
tion involved unethical behaviour. Even the idea that the 
gods humbled the fortunate because they were too happy 
(quite apart from ethics) lingers on in Herodotus. Above 
all there is a doubt as to the governing power in the world ; 
it may be, as Euripides says, the evil Necessity of the phi- 
losophers ; it may be human intelligence, perhaps as part 
of the universal Nous. No one knows. There is no infal- 



502 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

lible authority; no revelation; no inspired Word. None of 
the poets or would-be philosophers of the fifth and sixth cen- 
turies has any fixed ethical base of action. Most of them 
question old beliefs ; some doubt the existence of divinity. 
Pericles in his great speech has not a word to say in the 
way of religious consolation. 

Meantime the various Mysteries were influencing popu- 
lar opinion. A sentimental religion, deriving from a sen- 
suous mysticism, inspired hope of future life for the initi- 
ates, who as such, irrespective of their morality, were en- 
titled to happiness in this world and bliss in the next, while 
those not initiate would fail of happiness here and sink in 
slime hereafter. Out of the religious mystery arose the 
drama which gave a new power to religious (and irreligious) 
truths uttered before a popular assembly. Symbolic inter- 
pretation of old tales also affected religion. The divine in 
man was revealed in the tale of the Titans. They devoured 
Dionysos and were in turn destroyed by Zeus, but they had 
absorbed divinity and their ashes kept it still. ^ The old 
Homeric idea of hell (Hades) as a place of torment for 
sinners was now quite generally united with that of trans- 
migration, as in India. Zeus, to the thinker, became the 
supreme lord of the world, from whom in accordance with 
justice come good and evil.^ The rule of the gods became 

1 Cretan, perhaps Egyptian, influence may have been at work in 
the Dionysos-Demeter (later " Year Demon ") cult. Elysium has 
been compared with the Egyptian Aalu, whither he goes who being 
pure has escaped condemnation at the hands of Ra of Amenti 
(which becomes Rhadamanth-us). Miss Harrison, who believes 
in this etymology as an indication of Egyptian origin, also (Prol. 
421) derives tragedy from tragos, "spelt," spelt wrong for trugodia 
"wine-lees." The etymology is false, but Dionysos's connexion 
with tragedy is assured. Professor Ridgeway has lately sought to 
show that all tragedy arises from ghost-cult. But tragedy (and 
play-acting in general) has more than one root. The "Year- 
demon," or better the season-strife, is clearly dramatized in primi- 
tive cults without reference to ghosts. 

2 An evil principle is not recognized by early Greek thought. 
Later philosophers and Orphics, however, referred evil to evil 
demons. The earlier ghosts were not evil by nature, though if 
neglected they might do evil to man. Still, demoniac powers were 



GREEK RELIGION 5^3 

the world-order. The poets recognize the old gods but 
accept the new ideas. Pindar erects shrines to Pan and 
Cybele, statues to Zeus, Apollo, and Hermes; but to him 
the gods are moral powers and he believes of them only 
the tales which exhibit them as all-seeing spirits who honour 
truth and right ; de deis nil nisi bonum. He also teaches 
that a human soul may free itself from bodily bonds and 
find rebirth. Sophocles teaches that a man must follow the 
lead of the gods as beings superior to him in judgment of 
right. Undeserved misfortune by Aeschylus, who believes 
that the universe is moral, is explained on the principle 
of wisdom through suffering. To him all gods are names 
of one All-Being. Euripides (480-406 B.C.) taught that 
gods exist only if gods are good ; divinity exhibits itself as 
reason and justice, whether one call it aether or intelligence; 
also he adopts the mystic standpoint enough to imply that 
inspiration more than knowledge brings wisdom. The in- 
tellectual life of Athens in the fifth century agrees with the 
popular religion and with the philosophers in postulating a 
higher divinity than that of old and in making man a di- 
vinely affected spirit. Socrates definitely expressed reli- 
gion in terms of ethics, which finally led Plato (428-347) 
to the thesis that, as God is good, so the Good is God, and 
that man's nature is divine; since the human soul partakes 
of divinity in that it is eternal and immortal, like the Idea ^ 
which it can apprehend. For a time the belief in the old 
gods reasserted itself in condemning those publicly accused 

a popular belief, Ephialtes, the demon of indigestion, bogeys like 
Lamia and Mormo (to frighten children), etc., and "man-demons," 
who may have been ghostly spirits, as avengers, alkestores. To the 
philosophers these were still more or less real, though Heraclitus 
says that a man's character is his daemon. The wicked demons of 
Empedocles who suffer metempsychosis for 30,000 years are, how- 
ever, human souls. 

1 The Idea unites the noumenal and phenomenal. God is here 
transcendent; the world is shaped by demiurges according to the 
Ideas ; they make the gods and the gods make the rest of creation. 
The world itself is avTo'<:tbov , and evil by Necessity. Plato is the first 
to argue that the soul is an immortal substance; the prison-house 
notion he took from Pythagoras. 



504 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

of impiety. Socrates was slain as an unorthodox wor- 
shipper as well as a corruptor of morals ; Anaxagoras before 
him had to flee for his life. It is a mistake to assume that 
Athens was wholly liberal-minded ; but the populace con- 
founded Socrates with the Sophists, who had indeed upset 
with casuistry all the grounds of ethics and religion, while 
Anaxagoras's blunt statement that the popular gods were 
base or were mere matter (the sun is a stone), was to the 
mind of the pious mere blasphemy. 

In Orphism, the soul may eventually become divine; in 
Plato's system, it is already divine, needing only to escape 
its prison. This it does not emotionally but rationally. Al- 
though Plato condemned the quackery which arose in the 
train of Orphism, he borrowed much from it. Orphic ideas 
fairly metamorphosed the old Zeus-religion from six to 
three hundred b. c. All divinities were here looked upon as 
nourishing and saving forms of one potency : " Zeus is 
one, male and female, the breath (soul) of all. Sun, moon, 
stars, and sky are all Zeus." Each man is supposed to have 
a guardian spirit that accompanies him (fourth century). 
The world is imagined as coming from a cosmic egg (as in 
India). Eros and Dionysos were now held to be cosmic 
principles ; divine love replaced passion ; the principle of 
life and spiritual ecstasy took the place of Bacchantic mad- 
ness. Old rules received new interpretation. Formerly 
beans were avoided as food of the ghosts; now one must 
avoid be-ans as a form of be-ing.^ 

It must not be thought, however, that the old country 
religion was suddenly given up. On the contrary, as late 
as the fifth century Pan was brought from Arcady and es- 
tablished at Athens, as Asklepios was brought thither from 
Epidauros. But, from Plato's time on, Orphic thought satu- 
rated philosophical religion, as it had greatly influenced 

1 Such sacred puns were no joke to the ancients; the name had 
a religious significance. Compare (Professor Lamraan's version) 
the Hindu rule against eating meat: "Me eat will he, mam sa, 
whose meat, mamsa, I eat." The Greek rule, Kvdfiovs 8ia ttjv Kvtictv^ 
is rendered as above by Miss Harrison. 



GREEK RELIGION 5^5 

people and philosophers for two centuries before him. The 
best man is now the one *' nearest to God." Incarnated 
again and again, a man frees himself from grossness till 
(by a combination of purgatory and metempsychosis) he 
becomes his true self, divine. Soul and body make a dual 
nature, the latter hindering and imprisoning the former. 
Means of release in this life are, besides knowledge (Plato's 
emphatic modification), abstinence from meat, eggs, beans,^ 
etc., and a discipline more or less magical. Empedocles re- 
counted his " former births." Pindar, Euripides, and Plato 
were Orphic adepts. Plato in fact lived for some time at 
Croton in Italy, where Pythagoras was cultivated as a di- 
vine founder of a school, one of the numerous brotherhoods 
which took an important part in disrupting Greek religion. 
They were partly philosophical and partly religious congre- 
gations devoted to the service of special gods, generally for- 
eign gods like Sebazios, and having their own rules and 
sacraments. 

The importance of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) as a reli- 
gious teacher was not felt till the Middle Ages. In oppo- 
sition to Plato he taught that Ideas were not realities, but 
that there was a real and intelligent Cause, setting the world 
in order with a view to its predestined end, this cause being 
God in Nature. God does nothing without purpose ; order 
and purpose testify to Mind or God, who in the last analy- 
sis must be identical with Nature, as ultimate matter is one 
with what Aristotle calls the Form as God. But the philos- 
opher is not wholly consistent with himself, since he also 
holds that God (First Cause and Pure Thought) is not 
mixed with matter but immaterial, like Plato's Idea, tran- 
scendent, not immanent in matter, so that his system is logi- 
cally dualistic. The Nous or soul in this system is divine 
(eternal and immortal) ^ as it is the creative, reasoning part 
of man. Thus the way is prepared for Stoicism and its 

1 That is food fit for ghosts and demons. 

2 So Janet and Seailles, A History of the Problems of Philosophy, 
London, igo2, vol. ii. pp. 355 f., as opposed to Zeller, who denies that 
the human vovs of Aristotle is immortal. 



506 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

teaching that man has a moral nature. The Stoics ^ taught 
that the soul shares the appetites of the animal and the reason 
of divinity. The aim of life is to develop this moral nature ; 
virtue is man's highest pursuit and virtue is intelligence, 
discretion, courage, and justice, which they summed up as 
knowledge, thus identified with virtue, as Socrates identified 
the two. Man's will must be brought into accord with 
nature ; he must be dominated by reason, which is the active 
principle in the material universe. This reason, theoreti- 
cally material, is actually regarded as God (World-Reason), 
immanent in matter, not transcending matter though it may 
be called Zeus, " from whom men derive, the author of all 
nature, guiding all with law." To the Stoic, evil is com- 
plementary to good, as is dark to light; the soul, if wise 
(thus Chrysippus), survives death till the end of the age, 
when the world through a conflagration comes to a practical 
stop (it actually continues through new cycles of involved 
existences). One of the most significant doctrines of Stoi- 
cism is that of the brotherhood of man, all men possessing 
part of the universal Reason. That all men being divine 
are born equal and that all gods except God as Reason are 
allegories, may be said to sum up the view of the Stoics. 
Naturally, Stoicism became chiefly a moral philosophy, 
since it had discarded personal gods. Its doctrines, when 
received at Rome, had a great influence on the religion of 
the future. 

Reviewing the course of Greek religion thus far, we find 
that the idea of divinity, already enlarged by political acci- 
dent, as clans rose to State, was elevated by Orphism, which 
interpreted the divine not only mystically but morally. The 
moral element was an addition to the older (ritualistic) 
purity of the mysteries, but it was present in the Zeus-relig- 
ion. Resurrection, also was not new. All Greece had local 

1 The chief Stoics were Zeno (340 B.C.) of Cyprus, Cleanthes, and 
Chrysippus. They assumed two active and two passive (receptive) 
elements, fire and air versus earth and water; bi:t their fire is a 
reasoning energ}^ the seed of being and thought and the ethical 
principle ("Zeus"). 



GREEK RELIGION 5^7 

heroes, who lived after death ; ghosts, too, returned to earth 
to injure or benefit man; and vegetable-resurrection was 
celebrated as a divine return to life of a spirit-power.^ To 
these ideas of revival the Orphics added that of the human 
soul destined to suffer and be rewarded hereafter, which 
infused into Greek religion the belief in the torments of 
hell for every sinner, as every pure soul might be blessed 
in the next life. Homer's pessimism as to the next life 
becomes optimism ; but on the other hand his optimism or 
joy in this life becomes pessimistic ; the material world is 
now essentially evil (so even Plato argues).^ The germ 
of moral disease is to be seen here. Spirituality carried 
to the point of seeking riddance from the body is not 
sound. No healthy animal desires to die. So long as 
Orphism remained a cult of philosophy and of a few mystics 
it was not dangerous. In the sixth and later centuries the 
great gain for religion was its humanitarian aspect. Re- 
ligion is open to all and man's nature is recognized as the 
same everywhere. " No good man is alien to me," says 
Menander (fourth century b. c). God is a spirit discerned 
by mind : " The light of the mind is to gaze upon God." 
But as Athens declined in power her intelligence weakened. 
Finding that the old gods could not help her, her thinkers 
turned to magical mysticism and to the cult of foreign 
gods ; though probably the mass remained as true to the 
old gods, nymphs, spirits, and ghosts as masses always do. 
But Tyche, Fortune, an uncertain substitute for Zeus, be- 
came the refuge of the Greeks by the third century b. c. 
The cult of Fortune was indeed taken so seriously that 

1 Some modern scholars speak of this Year Daimon, as if he were 
the chief god of Greece ! But this D?Jmon is only a late anthropo- 
morphic form of the spirit of vegetation (Demeter-Dionyso?). To 
the Hindus, the Year Divinity was one with the Father of Life but 
also one with Death. 

2 Plato denied the real existence of matter (only the Idea exists), 
but ascribed sin to the soul's admii:ture with matter. Aristotle ob- 
jected to Plato's Ideas as being meaningless metaphors, abstractions 
without individual existence. The essence cannot be separated from 
that of which it is the essence. Both the tortures of hell anH the 
view that earthly life is evil were passed on to the Christian world. 



508 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

/Tyche was made one with the Logos or Nous. Epicurus 
(341 B. c), who was bom six years after Plato died, scorn- 
fully said that he would rather be the slave of the old gods 
than of such a deity. ^ Chrysippus, the Stoic, who died about 
208, says that in his day men worshipped Sun, Moon, Stars, 
Law, and deified human beings. This is a peculiarly inter- 
esting statement in showing that the Olympian gods, who did 
not include sun, moon, and stars, were quite dead and that 
people had reverted to a more primitive ghost- and nature- 
cult with an ethical tinge. But those who now called them- 
selves philosophers turned to Oriental occultism. They 
worshipped the elements ; substituted the Maid of the Mind, 
Sophia, for the Maiden Kore ; adored the seven planets, as 
spheres full of spirits ; admired the harmony of the uni- 
verse; and mystically identified the spiritual planets with 
elements, stoicheia, which in turn designated vowels, also 
seven, so that these became signs of the planets used in 
magical formulas. The months were divided into weeks, 
a day for each planet. Sun, Moon, Ares,^ Hermes, Zeus, 
Aphrodite, Kronos. This is adulterated Greek. Astrology 
with its pretence of prophecy became rampant as early as 
the time of Alexander, when Berosus exploited the '' Chal- 
dean " thirty gods of counsel beneath seven planet-gods, 
angel-stars, the Twelve Masters (Zodiacal signs), and all 
the rest, later Babylonian wisdom brought to Cos and thence 
spread over Greece. Professor Gilbert Murray calls this 
era the Stage of Failure of Nerve,^ as distinguished from 
those of Primitive Foolishness, Classical Olympians, and a 
final Stage of post^Christian religion. At any rate it was 
a stage which marked the decay of the old belief that Zeus 
was in his heaven and all was right with the world, though 
it takes perhaps as much nerve to renounce happiness as to 
expect it. But all this later rubbish, of the angel-stars, etc., 

^ Gad, the Palestinian god, is personified Fortune. In India, Time 
as Fate, also became a god of fortune, but he was identified with 
Brahma. 

2 Still preserved in Mardi, Mercredi, etc. 

^ Four Stages of Greek Religion, New York, 1912. 



GREEK RELIGION 509 

is only part of a logical reversal. The name philosopher 
deceives. Magic-mongers and astrologers made a great 
noise at this time, but religion was really advancing despite 
this foreign magic-philosophy, which masqueraded as reli- 
gion. For though condemned by Epicurus, who was a ra- 
tionalistic naturalist (practically atheistic),^ the Stoics 
adopted the new religious thought and went their way with 
it to create a very noble religion. The Orphic mysticism 
revels in thoughts of harmony and its " I am become God " 
and " I am your fellow star " reflects a real belief, yet one 
not so influential among the people nor tending to advan- 
tage them so much as does the Stoic aphorism, " God is the 
helping of man by man and this is the path to eternal 
glory." Even the Epicurean negation, '' God is naught to 
fear ; death is naught to feel," ^ is not indicative of a failure 
of moral fibre. But, in any event, philosophy has little to do 
with the religion of the masses. 

Greece was now over-run with foreign deities, Isis, long 
worshipped at Delos ; Cybele, Bendis, Adonis, Sabazios, all 
over the country. In 271 b. c, Ptolemy Philadelphos and 
his wife were formally deified, as Alexander had previously 
deified himself. This deification of man differs from the 
unconscious lapse of regard into worship which charac- 
terizes the cult of heroes and it was not acceptable in all 
cases. Aristotle was exiled because he deified a man. On 
the other hand the line between human and divine was not 
so broad as we draw it. Homer's heroes are *' god-born " 
and Plato was spoken of as " divine." But in the case of 
new deities, Greece was always catholic, or she would not 
have received the Cyprian goddess so easily, or so easily 
have recognized divinity abroad. Alexander worshipped 
Isis and the Jews' god from policy, but also because every 
place had its god and Greece recognized the fact. Hence, 
when Greece became a greater name, a Greek would worship 
as Greek the gods of the place where he was. Conversely, 

1 He taught that the gods lived without relation to man, who has 
no immortal soul. 

2 Murray, op. cit, p. 152. 



510 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

he could bring into Greece any god and worship him or her, 
when once he had realized that a god is not like a ghost, a 
spirit of one locality. Love is ever the same ; hence Aphro- 
dite rules everywhere; the spirit of life is ever the same, 
hence Cybele can be worshipped in Hellas as well as in Asia 
Minor. We must add the spread of the idea that all gods 
are forms of One and we have the explanation of the reli- 
gious syncretism of the time, which was marked also by so 
many foreign figures. 

There passed forth from this period into the coming 
greater religion of the world many streams of thought and 
cultural practices. The idea of a world-religion, of the 
brotherhood of man, the missionary spirit (in Orphism), 
these were all pre-Christian. Bloody sacrifice had been con- 
demned by the Pythagoreans and by Heraclitus. The ac- 
ceptable sacrifice was already a pure heart. The thought 
that man was of God and that God was one, was current be- 
fore Christian theology began. The Church incidentally 
converted some old gods into harmless saints. The adora- 
tion of images replaced the use of idols in the Greek 
world, — an image of DemiCter was in fact worshipped as 
a saint as late as 1801 ! — as did the use of incense in the 
Church that of incense at the altar of the temple.^ St. Paul 
based his arguments as to evil communications on the words 
of a Greek comedian, as he cited a Greek philosopher to 
show that men are children of God, and his knowledge of 
the Greek mysteries lent a mystic tinge to his interpreta- 
tion of the Christian mystery. 

After Greek philosophy became united, at Alexandria, 
with Jewish thought, there arose a new mysticism charac- 
terized by a belief in a God of whom nothing save his pure 
existence can be predicated. He creates only through sec- 
ondary powers, chief of whom is the reason or wisdom 
called Logos. It is not possible here to discuss this combi- 

1 Homer's use of sweet savours and scented wood led to the 
use of incense (in the seventh century) ; but this incense-idea came 
from the East. 



GREEK RELIGION 5^1 

nation of Platonic and Jewish belief further than to point 
out that according to it, as taught by Philo, in the first cen- 
tury A. D., knowledge and virtue are gifts of God, and conse- 
quently salvation is an act of grace, an idea which also 
amalgamated with Christian doctrine. The Logos doctrine 
is an attempt to bridge the chasm between Absolute Being 
and the world of phenomena. Later Neo-Platonism also 
tries or tends to make dualism monistic,^ but it bridges the 
chasm by means of two intermediaries and yields itself to 
ecstasy and theurgy rather than to logic. Based on Plato 
and the Stoics and, as its name implies, considering itself 
the interpreter of Plato's thought, it is in fact a philosophy 
of feeling rather than of thinking. 

At first Neo-Platonism was a revolt against the Sceptics, 
who had contended, against the Stoics and Epicureans, that 
knowledge was impossible. Opposed to such a negation. 
Plotinus, the pupil of Ammonius Saccas, who also taught 
Origen and Longinus, and other Neo-Platonists felt a long- 
ing for absolute truth, which they satisfied by mystical exal- 
tation, an immediate beholding or intuition, only to be at- 
tained when there is no distinction between the knower and 
the known. The soul must feel itself illumined by the 
Absolute in pure rapture ; objective knowledge and dialectics 
are of no use. Not reason, which distinguishes thought, 
thinker, and object, but something higher than reason must 
be the Absolute, which stands above being as well as above 
reason and has neither thought nor will ; but it is unthink- 
able, undefinable. Out of it emanates the world-intelligence, 
out of which again emanates the world-soul (a Pythagorean 
conception), which, permeated by reason as world-intelli- 
gence, actualizes it in an outer world. Except for the 
series of emanations, this system is at one with that of the 

1 It may be said that it tries rather to make its inherent monism 
dualistic. The world as emanation presupposes monism and Neo- 
Platonism was really monistic; its unconscious aim was to unite all 
in one being. But it had inherited a dualism it could not get rid 
of, physical and moral; its conscious objective was to get rid of one 
half and keep the other. 



512 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

earlier Upanishads of India (c. 600 B.C.), before the doc- 
trine of illusion was introduced into it. The teaching, 
though opposed to Christianity, had a marked effect on it. 
Plotinus taught at Rome in the middle of the third century 
A. D., where later his work may have converted Augustine 
from Manichaeism. He believed in asceticism, for one 
becomes diviner through becoming less human; by losing 
man one becomes God. But Plotinus also upheld poly- 
theism, the gods being spirits between God and man, and he 
maintained rites, making a dangerous alliance between his 
theology and magic, in that he held to a secret power in 
the soul and in nature, whence also he derived support for 
mantic inspiration. Here, too, we have contrasted good and 
evil spirits.^ He was followed by Porphyry, a vegetarian 
and Puritan polemical writer adverse to Christianity,^ as 
Porphyry in turn was succeeded by lamblichus, whose reli- 
gion was a curious mixture of godliness and magic. In this 
reversion to magic, Greek religion went back in its old age 
to the childhood-stage ; though one must remember that 
native belief had been infused for centuries with foreign 
thought and most of the later magic is an importation from 
the Orient. 

The living religion of Zeus as anthropomorphic god 
faded away in Greece under the light of philosophy and the 
concurrence of foreign cults. But probably its disappear- 
ance was influenced even more by lowly native thought than 
by higher or foreign beliefs. Thus the hope of a future 
happiness for the masses, the divine nature of man, the 
immanence of the divine, were all outgrowths of Grecian 
thought. These in their beginnings, are crude enough and 
in part (as Thracian) are not what we usually think of as 
Greek, though Thrace was really Greek and probably the 

1 Tutelary angels and malignant devils. Some of the latter are 
diseases as demons. Worship is paid to the good spirits. 

2 Porphyry wrote in defence of vegetarianism and against Chris- 
tianity. He opposed all amusements and objected to "injury of 
animals." Worship is not performed by sacrifice but by knowledge 
and godliness — no new idea, however, in Greek thought. 



GREEK RELIGION 5^3 

Dionysos of the first wild cult was racially an Aryan god, 
however opposed to Achaean or Athenian.^ How much this 
cult was affected by Cretan thought and ritual we cannot 
say, nor how early it and the Demeter cult began to broaden 
the old Zeus-religion. One point, however, should be kept 
in mind. The old religion was not one of mere form and 
ritual. It was ethical to a high degree even in Homer 
and not even the brotherhood of man is an idea quite un- 
known to its earlier st^ge. Its ethics did not coincide with 
ours. For example, to be chaste and not to steal or lie are 
not rules included in pre-Orphic religion; but it is no little 
achievement for a polytheistic nature-religion, even before 
man began to dream of a heavenly reward for earthly virtue, 
and with no authoritative scripture or word of authority, 
to demand mercy, kindness, forgiveness, care of the stranger, 
the sanctity of the suppliant and of marriage, the inviola- 
bility of an oath, and to teach that the prayers of men are 
heard as entreaties or as curses by heavenly powers. 

We have no right, however, to stop with this. We must 
recognize the purely Greek nature of Stoic theology and 
ethics, the Greek acceptance (if not origin) of the idea of 
spiritual purity, and the Greek character underlying the 
idealistic monism of Plotinus. On the other hand, we are 
apt to idealize somewhat both the sunny religion of the 
earlier Greeks and the philosophic acumen of the later, for- 
getting that the -earlier religion was compact with the gross- 
est superstition, much nastiness, and no little savagery, and 
that the latter reeked with magical practices. Nor can we 
suppose that the works of philosophers were ever conned 
by the masses who, however, were well acquainted with 
magic, and remained superstitious to the end. 

The religion of Greece is the only great religion — there 
are but seven — which is built upon human thought without 
appeal to inspired authority. The oracles were supposed 
to be divine revelations, but they constituted no religious 

iThe Thracian Getal believed that the dead lived with their god 
in a paradise below earth. Herodotus iv. 94f. 



514 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

system, and the Delphic oracle rather appealed to philosophy 
than attempted to govern it. The religion, in so far as one 
can speak of it as one religion, was not hampered by dogma- 
tism. The utterances of one teacher were stoutly but safely 
denied by another. There was no authoritative sacerdotal 
orthodoxy to hinder free expression of opinion, though oc- 
casionally the mob objected violently to impiety; but it was 
the mob and not the priests who were illiberal. The reli- 
gion of China might be considered a parallel; but prac- 
tically Chinese religion, inspired by Shang Ti, was dictated 
also by authority, and discussion was limited to ethics, at 
least for a thousand years. Brahmans, Buddhists, Zoro- 
astrians, Hebrews, all those who had an intellectual reli- 
gion, held it subject to orthodox approval.^ Heterodoxy 
was overthrown in Egypt as soon as it arose. Babylon had 
no ideas, or not enough to provoke heresy ; Rome never 
thought for herself. After Greece, Europe believed along 
received lines or hid her belief. Apart therefore from the 
clarity and logical brilliancy of Greek thought, apart also 
from the beauty which has transfused all she received and 
created, there remains the unique character of her genius, 
which united ethics and metaphysics into a religion based not 
on superstition but on philosophy, not on faith but on logic, 
yet in which due place was given to emotion. It is a very 
wonderful creation, though the very lack of authority re- 
sulted in the demolition of this edifice of the mind as soon 
as the mind itself began to fail ; for the image of every god 
falls when its foundation crumbles. 

^As has been shown above, all Brahmanic philosophy had to be 
based on the divine word of the Veda ; no Buddhistic sect but 
based its creed on Buddha's own teaching ; no Zoroastrian sect but 
emphasized its belief in Zoroaster's creed. It is often said that the 
State in China did not persecute heresy, but the Confucian books 
were burned as soon as the State found them objectionable and all 
those who taught them were buried alive (see p. 227). At a later 
date religious persecution in China drove out all foreign religions 
(p. 266). 



GREEK RELIGION 5^5 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 

Cambridge, 1903. 
H. Munro Chadwick, The Heroic Age, Cambridge, 1912. 
L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, Oxford, 1896- 

1909; The Higher Aspects of Greek Religion, Hibbert 

Lectures, London, 191 1. 
Arthur Fairbanks, A Handbook of Greek Religion, New York, 

1910. 
O. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte, 

Miiller's Handbuch, Munich, 1897. 
T. D. Seymour, Life in the Homeric Age, New York, 1907. 
E. Zeller, A History of Greek Philosophy, London, 1881. 
Gilbert Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion, New York, 

1912. 
C. H. Moore, The Religious Thought of the Greeks, Cam- 
bridge, Mass., 1916. 
See also the works mentioned above, p. 484, note 2. 



CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 

THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS 

The question whether Roman rehgion in its earhest known 
form represents the mixed rehgion of two races, one re- 
flected in the behefs of the plebeians and the other in that 
of the patricians, is and probably always will be impossible 
to answer. There was doubtless a native population, Ligu- 
rian, Pelasgian, or otherwise called, overpowered by a for- 
eign immigrating host, such a host as in Greece demarcates 
Achaean from *' Pelasgian " elements. But the Greek hy- 
pothesis applied to Rome is not easy to substantiate. The 
mixture remains more theory than fact. Rome, as we know 
it, consisted of a native population closely related religiously 
to other Italic settlements and, very near the beginning of 
its history, united with the neighbouring Sabines, whose god 
Quirinus was soon identified with the Roman Mars. 

From the first, Rome was a State of families and clans, 
agricultural but bellicose, yet controlled by law, which con- 
cerned itself equally with things divine and human. In 
fact, as India may be said to be rehgion incarnate, and as 
Greece is beauty and philosophy, so Rome is war and law. 
Its earliest religious expression is found in legalized and 
ritualized war-dances and lustrations under the care of the 
war-god. The earliest conception of the sky-god is that 
of a State-god who kills, Jupiter Latiaris and Feretrius. 
The agricultural community depended for its security on the 
war-god, who was conceived therefore as a god of fruits 
and fights. Before the discussion of other aspects of Ro- 
man religion, the whole character of that religion may best 
be discovered through the study of the two chief divinities 
recognized by it. 

516 



THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS 5l7 

Rome's civic religion consisted at first in the strict ob- 
servance of duties toward Mars and other poHtical spirits 
under the supervision of the king, who was the civic high 
priest; as in each family the pater familias was the chief 
priest of the family spirits. But as Rome itself never pro- 
duced a philosopher with new ideas, so it drew its civic cult 
from its more civilized neighbours, the Etruscans,^ through 
whom were filtered foreign notions, in regard to art, archi- 
tecture, the ritual (games, scenic shows), and even the gods. 
It had, according to tradition, no religious institutions at 
all till they were established by the Sabine Numa half a cen- 
tury after the city was built. It is significant that Numa 
was first of all a legislator; to the Romans, the State-reli- 
gion was a legislative measure, a legal matter, not a matter 
of feeling or of philosophy. As a back-ground to the civic 
religion may be imagined such primitive ideas as are both 
the property of other uncivilized races and the implied in- 
heritance of Rome, taboos, still operative for the priest, 
such as of knots and iron and wheat, the first because knots 
through sympathetic magic interfered with a smooth reli- 
gious line, the last two because iron and wheat were once 
novelties, condemned ipso facto, since religion is conserva- 
tive and dislikes innovation. At birth and death also there 
were taboos, such as are found generally among savages. 
Places struck by lightning were of course of religious inter- 
est and there was a disposition to regard odd numbers as 
lucky (numero deus impare gaudet), so that the first and 
third days of the month were more suited for gods' days 
than the second and fourth, a superstition still current 
(" there's luck in odd numbers "). Sympathetic magic may 
also be revealed in the slaughter of animals to procure rain 
and crops, the use of images transfixed to produce a like 
effect upon a foe, the swinging-rite, the magic ever prac- 
ticed by old women at child-birth, and perhaps the use of 

1 More remotely, the Etruscan art of divination was in part Baby- 
Ionian, perhaps by way of Minoan culture. Racial connexion be- 
tween Minoan and Etruscan civilization in the Bronze Age is sus- 
pected but not certain. 



5l8 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

amulets and other charms, such as incantations or spells, 
carmina, some of which have been incorporated into the 
State-ritual. On the whole, however, the State religion dis- 
couraged the practice of magic, though it retained old con- 
servative objections to novelties which were really based 
on a magical foundation.^ 

It is sometimes maintained that all this antedates religion 
and that the great Roman gods are a later stage of a reli- 
gion once consisting wholly in magic and animism. But all 
such statements are based on the a priori conviction that 
magic must precede religion, whereas as a historical fact 
magic makes no step which converts it into religion in Rome. 
From the beginning great gods are there, as well as little 
gods and those animistic sexless spirits which are in truth 
merely vivified things and actions. Yet even among these 
some from the first have personality, and it is questionable 
whether the host of these Numina (Powers) was not largely 
the result of later systematizing thought. What is true is 
that even the greater spirits show little myth-making thought. 
Mythology is poetry, due to imagination, and even the Poly- 
nesians had more religious imagination than the Romans. 
Consequently, when the early Romans had raised a Door- 
power to a Power representing any entrance or beginning 
in place or time, that is when they changed a janua or janus 
(door or gate) into a Janus, looking two ways, whose dou- 
ble door was always open except in times of war, they 
made no myths about him. They invoked him at the be- 
ginning of a prayer, because he was the beginning-spirit, and 
associated him as Matutinus Pater with the Dawn (of day 
and of life. Mater Matuta), and as Portunus with ports, be- 
cause a voyage begins there. But until the later poets got 
hold of him and Augustus made his gate famous by boast- 
ing that the Janus doors had thrice been closed (indicating 
perfect peace) under the emperor, no one paid him more 

1 The priestess of Jupiter called Flaminia Dialis was not permit- 
ted to wear leather shoes of the usual kind, just as the Flamen 
Dialis was subjected to taboos in regard to eating beans, wearing 
iron, contact with a corpse, etc. 



THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS 5 19 

than perfunctory honour; he was unknown to other ItaHc 
settlements. The first month may be named for him. He 
is called divom deus, but only as god of firsts; he had no 
early temple and no early inscriptions are devoted to his 
cult.^ As Door-spirit he is paired with Vesta the Hearth- 
fire. 

Janus (Janus-pater, but also fern. Jana), the apotheosis 
of the Numina, has a cult old but mechanical, though he is 
the highest of the indefinitely varied Roman host whose 
members are all personified abstractions, such as Silvanus, 
the wood-power, Faunus, the wild-animal power. Terminus, 
the boundary-power, Fons and Flora, spring- and blossom- 
powers. In contrast with Janus, Mars called Father, Mars- 
pater (-piter), was not simply Roman but Italian (Oscan, 
Umbrian, perhaps Etruscan), and from the beginning he 
was no mere sexless Power. The first month of the older 
year, beginning in March, was called by his name in Rome 
and elsewhere. His name was taken by men.^ The very 
old Brotherhood called the Arvales invoked him to keep evil 
from the inhabitants (herds and flocks). The priests called 
the Salii danced in his honour as the high-stepping (Gradi- 
vus) god of war, and war-arms made part of their furnish- 
ing, while a war-steed was sacrificed to him when the war- 
season was over in October.^ His sacred animals were 
fighting wolves and woodpeckers, after whom some tribes 
called themselves (Hirpini, Picenti). With him was asso- 
ciated, near the temple of Mars at Porta Capena, the cult of 
Honos and Virtus (bravery) and his energy was represented 
as a personified Neria (cf. avrjp and Sk. fiar = vir) ; also as 

1 Some ancient and modern writers falsely interpret Janus as 
sun-god or sky-god ; but he is nothing but a door, gate, beginning. 
The rex sacrorum was especially his priest, as religious ceremonies 
began with him. 

2 Mars is the only god whose name is used as a human proper 
name; perhaps, too, as month-name (Janus and Juno are doubt- 
ful). 

3 This October-horse is often cited as a proof that Mars was 
originally a vegetable-spirit; but see below and compare the combi- 
nation of war-and-fertility god among Mayas, Hindus, etc. 



520 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Bellona, to whom a temple was erected b. c. 296. His 
Sabine form, Quirinus, has left faint traces of a separate 
cult, but was generally looked upon as one with Mars, per- 
haps as his more peaceful side, until the later Romans made 
Quirinus a name of Romulus. The Campus Martius had 
an early altar to Mars at which the suovetaurilia sacrifice 
of boar, ram, and bull, was offered, partly to thank him for 
former favours and partly to incite him to fresh efforts, a 
sacrifice made every five years, after the sacrificial animals 
had encircled the people drawn up as an army. A similar 
sacrifice occurred with a corresponding circuit of the fields, 
and this also has given rise to the idea that Mars was origin- 
ally a god of vegetation. But primitive tribal gods were not 
confined to one specialty. The god of a tribe saw to the 
tribe, whether in war or peace, increasing their crops and 
their strength alike. The war-like Romans made Mars more 
warlike than agricultural and, had we to choose, the god's 
paraphernalia would make us prefer as starting point at 
least for Rome the conception of war-god. At any rate, to 
Rome he was at all time god of war, though at first equally 
god of agriculture. The country-folks kept his agricul- 
tural side ; the martial townsmen and army preserved him as 
war-god. At first he was simply clan-god, who protected 
his clan against foes spiritual and human. 

If Mars was the nearest god to the Roman, Jupiter (Um- 
brian Jupater) was the greatest. In his case also we have 
to do with a god who was more than Roman. Yet the con- 
ception of Jupiter (or Juppiter) was not exactly that of 
his Grecian parallel, a celestial being on a hill or in the 
clouds. Jupiter was rather the sky itself ('^ sub jove 
frigid " ) , less person than personified phenomenon. In 
other parts of Latium he is known as Diovis or Jovis and 
the meaning of his name is clearly " shining " sky (Diespiter, 
Dianus, Lucetius). Sometimes, however, he is not the day- 
sky but the dark night-sky, when as Summanus he receives 
dark Instead of white animals In sacrifice. As Latin god, 
he is called Juppiter indiges and he is in fact, after Janus, 



THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS 521 

the first of the Indigites, that is, the native gods in distinc- 
tion from the Novensides or immigrant settler gods, such 
as Minerva, Mercurius, etc., afterwards imported into Rome 
from Etruria and Greece. 

The temple of Jupiter was on the heights nearest to the 
sky, whence as Feretrius (smiter) he sent his lightning. 
As god of the sky, too, he was revered as the power giving 
rain and fruitfulness or fulness (Liber), which caused him 
to be called almus and frugifer and liheralis, whence later 
came his aspect as Libertas, still later understood as liberty. 
As Liber, the vine was his care and the feast called Vinalia, 
like the Pithoigia of the Greeks, a feast of wine-cultivators. 
His day was the full-moon day (Ides) of every month, 
when hght lasts all hours. But it was especially as a civic 
god that he was honoured. The god of right and victory em- 
bodying the Roman ideals was the Capitoline Jupiter called 
Optimus Maximus (his best and greatest form). There, 
on the Capitoline, a temple was built to him and there was 
his earliest altar as a god of victory. Afterwards this 
aspect of him as victor caused the creation of an abstract 
Victoria, a goddess to whom a temple was dedicated b. c. 
294. Jupiter himself, as Victor and Stator, had been hon- 
oured in the same way the year before. His emblem is the 
thunder-bolt stone (silex), which gives him the title Jupiter 
Lapis. But we need not imagine that Jupiter was originally 
either an oak, because it was his tree, or this silex, and then 
a god holding a stone (bolt), as is sometimes taught. For 
the history of the god ^ shows clearly that he was from the 
beginning a sky-god. This stone, perhaps originally a di- 
vine thunder-stone, was carried by the Fetiales, a college of 

1 No one has yet attempted to show that Zeus-pater, Ju-piter, 
and Dyaus-pitar, are not the same "bright (sky) father," the 
most incontestable and important fact in the history of Aryan 
civilization. But many scholars who, on a priori grounds, assert 
that Sky^ cannot be a primitive god, assume that the oak and silex 
were divine before the sky and that therefore they are the real god. 
The obvious conclusion, however, would be that, if previously di- 
vine, they became, with the advent of the Sky as god, his interpreters, 
not that Jupiter was originally a tree or a stone. 



522 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

priests, whose duty it was to make and preserve treaties 
under religious sanction, and the god they revered was 
Jupiter Fidius, from which conjunction also, as in the case 
of Victoria, was evolved a goddess Fides. As god of oaths, 
right, and faith, Jupiter was the chief political god of the 
Republic, but also in private matters a god of troth (wit- 
ness-god in weddings, etc.), to whom, under the name Ter- 
minus, boundary-lines were entrusted. But always the fun- 
damental meaning of the god reappears. The augurs, who 
studied the sky, were his as interpretes Jovis. In drought, 
matrons with bare feet and loosened hair took part in the 
aquaelicium or rite of eliciting water from Elicius, Jupiter 
Pluvialis, on the Aventine. As concomitant and cause of 
rain he was also called Tonans, even Fulgur, lightning and 
rain coming together. Being god of all Latins he was cele- 
brated as Latiaris Jupiter on Mt. Albanus, in a sacrifice 
without wine and marked by a swinging festival, such as is 
found in India, to increase the power of the sun. His 
" wife," Juno or Jovia, was an Italian goddess, known to the 
Umbrians as Lucina and Regina (like Belit, Our Lady 
Queen) . She was also conceived as armed with lightning ; but 
she generally appears as the feminine side of Jupiter, the 
power especially concerned with women. Hers were the 
strips of goat-skin, which caused fertility when women were 
struck with them in the rite called Lupercalia. Her day 
was the first day of each moon (month) and certain aspects 
of her cult make it possible that she herself was originally 
the moon. In Greece also, Dione (Juno) was the older 
consort of Zeus. Juno was not of any importance at first 
as a State-goddess. She may have come from some neigh- 
bouring town, perhaps as Latin goddess of Veii. Goddesses 
were more powerful out of Rome than in it, perhaps owing 
to a difference socially in the power of women or to the 
fact that matrilinear rights had been given up by the Ro- 
mans. The strongest point in her character as Moon-god- 
dess is her connection with women as Lucina of the Kalends ; 
but this is not decisive. She may have been to Jupiter as 



THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS 523 

Moles and Neria were to Mars, merely the feminine side or 
the power as feminine.^ Women swore by Juno, their own 
feminine power, as men by their virility, Genius. 

The history of Jupiter reflects not only the enlargement 
of Rome politically but its religious growth. He is grouped 
with Mars and Quirinus and this indicates the period of 
union of the first three communities, with Rome as the most 
important; but this group soon yields to that of Jupiter, 
Juno, and Minerva, which marks the first Graeco-Etruscan 
influence. There was originally only one goddess of great 
importance at Rome. She was Vesta, the Hearth-fire (in 
distinction from Volcanus, destructive fire),^ who was 
paired with Janus, as Door and Hearth, and like him was 
intimately, as well as publicly, revered. Her relationship 
to the Greek Hestia is obvious, yet she was not borrowed 
from Greece. To Vesta offerings were made after dinner 
by the household ; as a State divinity she was served by vir- 
gins and her sacred fire was renewed yearly on the (old) 
New Year's Day. Her cult was in charge of the Pontifex 
Maximus and any Vestal who violated her vows was buried 
alive, as happened in 217 b. c, in the Punic war, when 
other victims suffered the same fate, but as offerings to the 
lower gods. As spirit of the hearth, Vesta was associated 
with the Di Penates, Numina of the pantry or food-supply, 
and with the Lares, spirits, who may have been ancestral, 
presiding over the family in a larger sense, including the 
fields and the house (Lar Familiaris). The little spirits of 
the fields and woods, such as Flora and Silvanus, or for 
the garden and cattle, Pomona and Bubona, were of im- 
portance to the house-holder, but only Census and Ops and 
Saturnus became great, withal because they represented the 

1 In India the god Indra (war-god) is called "lord of power" 
and soon Power becomes his " wife," helped to that dignity through 
the fact that " lord " also means husband. Juno, however, was not 
" wife of Jove," but a Latin goddess carried to Rome after the 
Romans conquered the city where she was chief divinity. 

2 Vulcan is the lightning (incendiary) fire. The volcano is Vedi- 
ovis, who lightens and thunders from below, associated with the 
Manes. See Frothingham, Am. J. Phil, xxxviii. p. 370. 



5^4 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

harvest-store and sowing of grain, as publicly recognized 
in State ceremonials. There was also an insignificant water- 
spirit called Neptunus, who first became important when 
the Romans identified him with Poseidon. The later Ro- 
mans made a list of functional spirits, that is, spirits repre- 
senting mere functions, such as Edulia, Pbtina, Domiduca, 
Eating, Drinking, Home-bringing, etc., but many if not 
most of them were probably later abstractions, like the ab- 
straction Roma, eventually deified. 

Among the primitive Roman gods must be reckoned also 
the Genius and Di Manes. The Genius was a man's own 
creative power, which was regarded almost as a separate 
entity, even as the marriage-god. Later, every family and 
tribe or town had its genius, so that by 200 b. c. we find 
reverence paid to the Genius of the Roman People, as if it 
were a guardian spirit. The Genius of a man w^as feted 
on his birthday. The departed spirits, called Di, were hon- 
oured (compare the Eumenides) as good, Manes, kindly 
disposed, or were so named that they might be kind. Though 
called gods, they were recognzed as spirits, which had 
gone down to the earth-deity or later to Orcus under earth.^ 
Persons represented them with masks at funerals and to 
them, on the tenth day after the funeral, gifts of food were 
made. They were also supposed to return through the 
mundus, an opening in the ground in the Forum. The dead 
man was carried feet foremost through the door and his 
house was then purified, as if to prevent his return. In 
May the old Lemuria rite made it necessary for the house- 
father to oflfer the ghosts beans and bid them go; but in 
February they were honoured with kindly services at the 
Parentalia and Feralia. In this double cult there was doubt- 
less retained the view of ghosts as evil spirits together with 
the more advanced or super-added view of the family spirits 
as protecting powers. It is possible that, as suggested 

1 The cult of underworld gods is due to Greek thought. The 
primitive Italian population thought little of the underworld but 
had an earth-deity. 



THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS S^S 

above, the Lares were also originally conceived as larvae, 
ghosts, since Laverna was goddess of the dead. But there 
was no real worship of the dead. They were thought of as 
massed spirits only, not as individual heroes, as in Greece. 
Mother Earth, Tellus Mater, was revered as a fostering 
mother in conjunction with the crop-making Ceres, though 
also as a goddess associated with the Manes, who vanished 
through a hole in the ground and were received by her, as in 
Celtic belief. But in general the Romans did not pay much 
attention to the dead or to a life to come, till Greek rites and 
philosophy taught them to hope for a happy hereafter. 
Even then the view of the learned was often that of Pliny, 
who says that man is an animal like other animals and 
ought not to expect a future for himself different from that 
of other animals. Life was enough for the Roman; his 
main concern with the dead was to treat them properly 
and then be rid of them. Originally he regarded them 
merely as a swarm of evil-minded ghosts and maltreated 
them, somewhat as he did other spirits whom he suspected 
of evil intent and kept av/ay by hacking at them and sweep- 
ing them out of the house, as did the Greeks and as do the 
Eskimo and Shaman today.^ 

Naturally, to an agricultural community, the spirit of good 
crops was of prime importance and among the early tem- 
ples of Rome one was built by Servius Tullius to such a 
goddess, under the name of the fertile, Fortuna. This god- 
dess was later identified with the Greek goddess of fortune 
as good luck and became the greatest of those abstract fe- 
male powers, such as Virtus, Concordia, Pietas, who re- 
ceived not only poetic recognition but a practical service 
with an altar and cult. She may have been a Sabine deity. 

With the growth of Rome, new divinities, absorbed from 
neighbouring states, began to be recognized, such as Diana 
of Aricia, a goddess of the wild, whose cult was taken over 
by Rome when Rome became head of the Latin league and 

1 The burial of ordinary Romans was merely casting them into a 
pit. Only distinguished Romans of the Republic had special tombs. 



526 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

later became one with the cult of Artemis (431 B.C.). It 
is probable also that Minerva was not originally Roman but 
was received from Falerii, perhaps the local goddess of 
handicraft, afterwards goddess of wisdom, identified with 
Athene. Her festivals came in March and June and she 
has been thought to be Etruscan; but Etruria was a land 
through which Greek divinities came in altered form to 
Rome and she may have been Greek from the first.^ By 
way of Etruria and lower Italy, which was Greek, came 
other religious innovations. Castor and Pollux and Hercu- 
les came thus as gods of merchants, who also introduced 
Hermes as Mercurius (trade-god). All these gods had 
their days of celebration ^ as they had temples (Castor's 
temple as early as 485 B.C.). They first became Italian 
and then thoroughly Roman, thus paving the way for future 
immigration from Greece. Yet the feriae or festival days 
show that the old gods were for a long time the main reli- 
gious factors of Rome. It has already been remarked that 
all Ides were sacred to Jupiter and all Kalends to Janus 
and Juno. The principal festivals in old days were agri- 
cultural and military. The first month was sacred to Mars, 
who remained the chief deity in the lustration of fields, from 
which he kept oflf evil. Agricultural interests are repre- 
sented also in the next month, when cows were sacrificed, as 
instruments of fertility, to Earth, and Ceres was revered. 
Then too firebrands were tied to foxes let loose over the 
fields, to scare away crop-injuring demons, and Pales was 

1 The fact that she made one of the triad, Jupiter, Juno, and 
Minerva, shows that Greek influence was already felt. 

2 The year was divided into days fit for legal business and other 
days, though some days were " split," iissi, half profane and half 
sacred. Days were thus fasti, fit for business, or nefasti, that is, 
holy, because it was wrong to conduct business on such days. 
Vergil says that there is no divine or human law against doing 
some work festis diebiis (Georgics i. 268). The holy days were 
109 in the year, generally days counted as lucky (odd days). Dies 
religiosi were vitiosi, days on which no undertaking, religious or 
profane, might be begun, such as days devoted to the cult of the 
dead or days of public misfortune. 



THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS 5^7 

worshipped by shepherds, also by the State, as god or god- 
dess of productivity (the feast was called Parilia, from 
pario?) ; but the most striking feature of this festival was 
that men and cattle were passed through or over fire as a 
means of purification. Shortly after this, red mildew was 
propitiated, as Mars, by the sacrifice of a red dog (Robi- 
galia, April 25th). In May, came the Lemuria or rite of 
expelling ghosts (above) and the Fratres Arvales or broth- 
erhood of ploughmen undertook to keep evil from the crops 
by their lustration, a purificatory ceremony consisting in 
dancing along the boundary lines and making offerings of 
the suovetaimlia with an apotropaic litany against pests.^ 
Consus and Ops, the harvest-horde deities, were honoured 
in August. A formal sacrifice was made to them at an 
underground altar in the Circus Maximus, where grain was 
stored (as usual in cellars), whence the goddess Ops became 
associated with underground powers; they were honoured 
again in December, when Saturnus, the Sowing-god, was 
celebrated with the well-known laxity of harvest times (the 
Saturnalia). In October occurred the armihistrium or 
purification, when the army rested from its annual duties. 
This was of course a festival of Mars and (as already 
stated) to him at this time was sacrificed the war-horse. 
In the same month came a fountain festival, Fontinalia, and 
a wine- festival, when diseases were healed by drinking. At 
the former, garlands were flung into springs and the god- 
dess or nymph Juturna (Diuturna) was worshipped. She 
was a Latin goddess whom later myths made wife of Janus, 
as the latter was made father by her of Pons, to whom a 
temple was given (231 b. c.).^ Of all these rites the 
Saturnalia on December 17 has lasted longest in after-ef- 

1 Later, faces of Bacchus suspended to trees were used for the 
same purpose, to secure fertility (Georgics, 2, 388). 

2 The fons or spring in these cases is universaHzed. Every spring 
was a holy medicinal power. Probably Juturna was originally a 
special spring whose name like Arethusa ("flowing") was localized. 
Vergil makes Juturna sister of Turnus. 



528 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

fects, since from it derive several Christmas customs, such 
as gift-giving and candle-illumination. At the end of this 
Sowing rite came one in honour of Tellus and Ceres, Earth 
and Grain-goddess. December over, the month of Janus 
celebrated the goddess of new birth (beginning of the year) 
called Casmenta, originally a lymph (nymph), whose name 
suggests the connexion between prophecy and the Muses or 
singing water as an oracle. She was a prophetess of birth 
rather than a birth-goddess. In the purifying month Feb- 
ruary, at the end of the old Roman year, were performed 
rites in honour of the dead (Parentalia, Feraha), preceded 
by the Lupercalia, in which survived a magical practice 
probably influenced from the beginning by Greek thought. 
The participants were smeared with sacrificial blood from a 
dog and goat, wiped in wool dipped in milk, and after laugh- 
ing were clothed in goat-skins of the sacrifice, when they 
feasted and then ran around the Palatine, striking women 
with strips of the goat-skins to induce fertility. This festi- 
val was dedicated to Faunus (''Pan"). It was a wolf- 
resisting (lup-arceo) rite, according to the Romans them- 
selves and most modern scholars, though both etymology 
and meaning are doubtful. Probably the rite was at first 
for possession of the herd by the Luperci, the " wolf- 
warders." Faunus is god of the rite to whom the goat is 
offered (not piacular) ; there is no sign of totemism in this 
or any other Roman rite. The chief act originally was the 
amphidromion, which implies the magic circle, especially 
when performed by naked or nearly naked people. Hitting 
the women was a secondary trait introduced in the third 
century. This is one of the few rites in which blood is a 
prominent feature ; its presence and removal show that the 
rite was then understood as purificatory. It is not, as Mann- 
hardt thinks, a vegetation rite, but a mystery in which the 
purificatory wool (a fehrunm) soaks up the symbol of death. 
The (obligatory) laugh indicates the joy of the purified. 
These are Greek ideas, which may have been introduced 



THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS 5^9 

circa 200 b. c, when the rite was enlarged and its charac- 
ter changed.^ Its classical form is a composite. 

There were several minor feriae stativae or fixed festivals, 
such as the Blessing of Children, Liberalia (March 17), the 
Matronalia, Vestalia, and Matralia, in April and June, the 
feast of Bona Dea, attended only by women, and later the 
feasts of foreign divinities, the Megalesia (feast of Cybele, 
April 4), and that of Castor and Pollux (July 15). In the 
same month occurred the feast of Neptunus as a sea-power. 
At Paestum-Poseidonia there was a Greek colony who hon- 
oured him as sea-god. The later New Year's day in 
honour of Janus was celebrated January 9. The old New- 
Year's day was celebrated with gross liberty in honour of 
Anna Perenna, the year-goddess. To the simple celebra- 
tions of old days were added, through foreign influence dur- 
ing the Republic, games, introduced at first to celebrate a 
triumph, which became popular, and later to these games 
(of horse-racing, etc.) were added wrestHng, dancing, and 
dramatic scenes, all as religious functions. 

These new elements, circus and drama, marked the wor- 
ship of Greek gods, whose cult was introduced at an early 
date. Before turning, however, to the incursion of Greek 
influence, it will be necessary to indicate the process by 
which the field of religion was kept fruitful. All public 
rites of religion were performed at public expense for the 
people under the supervision of the tribes or the representa- 
tives of the State. Sundry brotherhoods, before any formal 
colleges of priests existed, had the conduct of certain rites 
and these were retained through the historical period, though 
their importance varied at different times. Such were the 
Salii and Arvales and Luperci already mentioned, all of 
whom were originally priests of Mars. About 200 b. c. were 
added the priests of Cybele called GalH, but no Roman 
might become such a priest. But under Etruscan influence, 

1 See Fowler, Roman Festivals, London, 1899, and Deubner, 
Lupercalia in Archiv fur Religionsgeschichte, 1910, pp. 481-508. 



530 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

as early as the sixth century b. c, there were formed State 
colleges of priests, the chief of whom were the Pontifices 
and Augures, who had charge of the whole public religious 
life of the people. The Pontifices administered ecclesiasti- 
cal laws which concerned marriage, adoption, testaments, 
expiation, etc., prescribed forms and ceremonies, kept the 
archives, composed the calendars and annals, inaugurated 
magistrates, and punished persons guilty even of private 
religious offences, on the ground that even a private crime 
violated the pax deorum. This college kept a stock of re- 
ligious formulas useful for any occasion and it was they 
who drew up the lists of invocations called indigitamenta. 
Till 300 B. c. they and the other priests were all patricians. 
That some Etruscan divination is of Babylonian origin 
has already been mentioned. Yet this does not apply to all 
divination. The Augures or auspices divined signs sent by 
the gods by means of birds and animals (inspection of the 
liver), and interpreted omens, such as lightning, sneezing, 
etc., much as did other Europeans. Besides other less im- 
portant colleges, there were also one of the Fetiales, insti- 
tuted by Numa and presided over by the Pater Patratus, 
which had treaties under religious observation and acted 
as guardians of the public faith. It was their office to con- 
clude treaties with religious formality and to demand resti- 
tution when necessary. Their aid was required also in de- 
claring war. In the course of time the Pontifices became 
more secular than religious and the office of Pontifex 
Maximus became politically important. Other religious of- 
ficials were special priests in the modern sense, whose aco- 
lytes have been preserved as a feature of the Christian 
church. Of these special priests, the most notable were the 
Duoviri afterwards (367 b. c.) increased to Decemviri, by 
which name they are generally known, though later made 
a college of Quindecimviri,^ sacrorum or sacris faciundis, 

iThis number was raised to sixteen by Caesar and even to more 
than twenty by the subsequent emperors, who kept the college till 
the fourth century a. d. 



THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS 531 

whose sole business was the care of the Sibylline oracles 
and the rites thereby enjoined ; the three Flamines of Jupi- 
ter (Flamen Dialis), Mars, and Quirinus; and the Vestal 
Virgins. These Vestals were appointed to care for the 
State fire. They were chosen by the Pontifex Maximus at 
the age of six to ten and served thirty years, as initiates, 
servants of the sacred flame, and teachers, one decade for 
each office, after which they might marry. They had pe- 
culiar dignities and privileges, such as front seats at spec- 
tacles, freedom from parental control, the right of way even 
with the Pontiff. They wore white and did not sacrifice. 
Their whole office recognizes Fire as a god of purity.^ 

The connexion thus indicated between religion and 
morality appears also in the old legal requirement that sin- 
ners were sacri to the gods, that is, it was left to offended 
gods to punish sin, possibly implying an earlier stage in 
v/hich sinners were sacrificed, though there is no certain 
indication that the Romans countenanced human sacrifices. 
It is true that the gods do nothing (as Cicero says) to make 
a man moral ; they only make him healthy and wealthy ; yet 
their attitude was not immoral, as was that of the Greek 
gods, and their relations with man were based above all 
on a scrupulous regard for truth and faith. This religious 
scrupulosity is usually presented as the most striking fea- 
ture of Roman religion. The vow must be kept in letter 
and spirit, whether a private or a public undertaking, and 
to ensure this there was the most meticulous regard in pre- 
serving forms. This is extended to all dealings with the 
gods and religion thus becomes a sort of heavenly book- 
keeping, in which obligations are entered and met with dry 
exactness. But it is possible that this aspect has been un- 
duly emphasized. In the first place, verbal accuracy in 
things divine is not unique, for it is exactly the attitude of 
the Brahman, to whom a mistake in pronunciation of a 
word ruined a religious ceremony, and fidelity to the vow 

1 Analogies in Ireland and Peru have been noticed above (pp. 114, 
131). But the Vestals also to do with fertility-rites. 



532 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

belongs to the Negro, whose fetish-vow is as rigidly ob- 
served as the Roman's votum. But more than this, we 
know Roman religion mainly through its appearance as a 
State-religion controlled by priests, who have their own 
way of being religious by form. Vows made to the gods 
were of course always a way of winning favours desired. 
Thus, as the State promises something if the gods will help, 
so the farmer does also.^ Yet there was no book-keeping 
in the gay but religious revelry of harvest-thanksgiving and 
New-Year or spring-time ritual. Nor in private life was it 
perhaps wholly mechanical observance when the pater 
familias offered his daily gift to the house-hold gods and 
his yearly tribute to his ancestral spirits. Probably the act 
of Feretrius inspired religious awe at all times and though 
the religious rites at fixed seasons seem to adjust relations 
with this or that god for the year, and so to be rid of him 
for another twelve-month, yet all feriae stativae appear to 
do this. There are even some Christians who seem to re- 
member Christ only on Sundays and Christmas Day. 

The religious festivals do show, as has been observed by 
others, that the Romans had passed beyond the stage where 
man is uncertain of the Powers. These Powers were now, 
so to speak, under control. If the State fulfilled its recog- 
nized obligations, the gods could not but fulfil theirs. So 
much for so much. The Roman State might sleep peace- 
fully when it had secured the divine blessing, for it was to 
morally responsible gods that the Romans looked for a fair 
exchange of values. Yet even this is more a logical than 
an historical induction. Beneath the contract and its fulfil- 
ment, which lie open for inspection, there was doubtless the 
feeling, not revealed by documentary evidence, that the gods 
were not bound by any contract which ignored religion in 
a deeper sense. The wild religious expedients adopted in 
the Punic panic, when men and women were buried alive, 
a rite unknown to ordinary occasions, the frequent recourse 

1 Compare Vergil, votis vocare inhrem, as advice to the farmer 
who wants rain. 



THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS 533 

to Other gods, whenever the state was imperilled, all show 
that the martinet character of Roman religion was mainly 
on the surface. The Roman said " I thank the gods " on 
every occasion. It is true, however, that the Roman, who 
had no fear of hell hereafter and no " sense of sin " and 
was neither so imaginative nor emotional as the Hindu and 
Greek, appears to have taken his religion very calmly on 
ordinary occasions and that, as a State-afifair, it was looked 
upon as something outside the province of the individual. 
Whether the private man went to a feast prepared by the 
State for a god, was in the old days a matter of indifference. 
If he observed the holy day, he was not obliged to appear 
at any public religious function; the priests did his public 
religious duty for him, as his bailiff might worship the fam- 
ily-god for him. He had, so to speak, to keep Sunday, but 
he did not have to go to church. Gellius cites the say- 
ing, one must be pious but not too pious, that is, super- 
stitious. The early Roman, too, was not artistic, a great lack 
in building up cults. He did not even build temples till the 
Etruscans taught him how. His templum (derived from 
the Etruscans) was the sky as he saw it, divided into regions, 
where Heaven might show signs, and his first earthly temple 
was merely a space of earth marked out to correspond. 
The song and flight of birds were his oracles, voices of the 
gods as clear to him as the obvious voice of Jove in thunder. 
Grecian oracles ^ and lots were foreign devices, adopted 
later, and studying the entrails of animals to learn the future 
was an ancient form of divination (haruspicium) brought to 
him by the Etruscans or Greeks, to whom he owed also, as 
already remarked, the introduction of various other reli- 
gious novelties. Yet these aspects must not blind us to the 
fact that a grateful piety really expressed the religious atti- 
tude of Rome, as contrasted with the base fear of spirits. 
The Roman at all times recognized a supreme directing 
Power, which was a moral force in his life and in that of the 
State. He attributed to it his own sturdy character, up- 

1 Compare habitae Gratis oracula quercus, Georgics, 2. 14. 



534 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

holding truth and hard duties of every sort. The Romans 
surpassed all nations in the worship of gods, said Cicero; 
he meant that Roman religion produced a better State, which 
to a surprising extent had banished magical superstition 
in favour of moral religious powers. And Cicero was 
right, for, with the exception of religions about which he 
knew nothing, Roman religion, though not profound, was 
the cleanest and highest of classical antiquity.^ It had no 
such scandalous divinities as the best known to Homer. It 
had indeed its unclean under-side, but in general it was a 
religious structure built by earnest upright men, who had 
made their gods in their own image and whose lack of 
mythology, though it may have been due primarily to a 
lack of imagination, resulted also in a safe lack of familiarity 
with the gods. Communal feasts with divinities played 
little part in Rome, though found in the Feriae Latinae and 
festivals like the Fornacalia, a communal feast of those 
using the same oven. Sacrifices generally were honorific 
or piacular.2 Men did not presume to know their gods; 
often they did not know by name the divinity to whom they 
prayed. Their relations with them if stiff were dignified. 
Until the praetorship was established, in the fourth cen- 
tury B. c, the Pontifices, whose chief absorbed the powers 
of the old Rex Sacrorum, were practically a law-court as 
well as a religious college (eventually of fifteen members) 
and the Pontifex Maximus became the judge and arbiter of 

1 Cicero is contrasting it with Greek, Egyptian, and Oriental cults. 

2 The State-sacrifices were either for lustration, that is accom- 
panied with prayer for protection, or piacular, that is a gift as a 
sin-offering to atone for some remissness in observing the " sacred 
law." Vegetables, beans, corn, cakes, fresh fruits, and animal sacri- 
fices with milk, wine, and incense, were offered in fire from the 
first recorded times as daily offerings by private individuals ; but 
there are indications that wine was regarded as something new ; 
some sacrifices expressly omit it. Of the begarlanded animals 
(sex, age, and colour were important), the gods received the care- 
fully examined exta (heart, lungs, liver, gall) and the priests con- 
sumed the viscera. The suovetaurilia, boar, ram, and bull, was the 
greatest sacrifice ; the boar or pig the commonest. The lower gods 
received black, the upper gods, white animals. 



THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS 535 

all affairs divine and human. That is, the activities of the 
people were directed by interpreters of the divine will, who 
controlled their conduct in all the acts of their life. 

It is very difficult to say when the old Roman religion 
began to change. If we compare what has been called the 
religion of Numa (early Roman) with the religion of the 
third century b. c, we find it as a civic phenomenon greatly 
altered. Greek gods and Greek ritual submerged what was 
old Roman. But while the time, even the year, can be 
stated in which this or that Greek god was introduced, we 
cannot tell how early a more insidious intrusion of Greek 
ideas began. Even in the Lupercalia, Greek thought ap- 
pears to dominate; even in the introduction of Minerva as 
one of a triad, Greek arrangement seems to lurk ; and even 
in the country rites of Flora or Fauna, which elements came 
from the Roman and which from the Greek is hard to 
specify. 

Before speaking of those Greek gods and rites regarding 
which there is no question, we may pause a moment to lay 
more stress on the importance, for the understanding of 
Roman religion as a whole, of some of the little celebra- 
tions, to which only a passing allusion has been made. In 
every religion these seemingly unimportant factors are apt 
to be underestimated. So we tell of the great gods of India 
and their ritual and flatter ourselves that we have described 
the religion of that land, while as a matter of fact the real 
religion of an ordinary Hindu was probably mainly con- 
cerned with spirits and beliefs which have left but fugitive 
traces in the literature. Or in modern days we may de- 
scribe the cult and belief of the Church and call it the re- 
ligion of a Sardinian peasant, whose real religion is scarcely 
touched by formal cult and acknowledged belief. We must 
make allowance for this factor in judging of Roman reli- 
gion. Of course the great gods and their cult as prescribed 
were recognized ; but probably the Roman's real religion lay 
closer to him. We have spoken of the pretty rite of crown- 
ing with garlands the beneficent fountain and offering a 



53^ THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

share of the daily meal to the household gods. But all 
Roman life was full of such artless devotion ^ though in 
our uncertainty as to Greek influence spreading naturally 
north from Hellenized lower Italy, we cannot say certainly 
how the elements of the simpler cults should be analysed. 
But, admitting the possibility of early Greek influence, it is 
more important for us to realize what the Roman thought 
and did than to know whether all he thought and did was 
his own invention. 

The number of rustic rites, some of which afterwards 
became adopted by the city, is too large to describe indi- 
vidually, but their import may be seen in one or two exam- 
ples. So the offerings and devotion paid to Mother Earth 
appear in a simpler form addressed to Dea Dia, the " god- 
dess " par excellence, whose personality gradually vanished 
as it was absorbed into that of the specific Earth. The god- 
dess Flora was worshipped in spring, that she might guard 
the growing grain, though it was not till 238 b. c. that a 
Roman temple was erected to her, withal at the behest of 
the Sibylline oracle. The form of worship was not refined. 
Dances by naked women and coarse mimes celebrated the 
goddess of fecund nature, as was to be expected, and Greek 
influence is discernible in the State performance. But be 
the rite Greek or Roman originally, it was Roman enough 
by the end of the third century b. c. to be regarded as an 
exposition of Roman religious feeling and probably it was 
not all Greek. Flora is Italian, revered by Sabines and 
Oscans as well as by Romans ; ^ her cult is essentially that 
of a Venus, unrefined, native. Another popular festi- 

1 Thus the rite in honour of Ceres described by Vergil has no 
sinister union with that of Tellus, as an underground divinity, but 
the peasants " dance and sing to Ceres," make to her offerings of 
honey, milk, and wine, and " invite her into their homes," as a 
rustic goddess of the harvest (Georgics i. 347). 

2 Flora was worshipped by the Fratres Arvales and had her early 
Flamen. Her day was the prostitutes' festival. The more or less 
obscene fertility-rite at the shepherds' feast Parilia (April 21) 
with the fire-lustration (above) belongs to this class of religious 
rites. " Worship " here is largely magic. 



THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS 537 

val was the harvest-feast of Consus, the divinity of the 
harvested grain. First fruits were offered to the god ; ath- 
letic contests were held by the shepherds ; the farm animals, 
allowed a day of rest, were garlanded with flowers ; and 
there was a mule-race. The feast of Saturnus, originally 
of purgative character/ was formally altered to a Greek 
rite in 217 B. c, when Saturnus was identified with Kronos. 
As a last specimen of the real religion of the ordinary 
Roman we may consider the goddess Fauna, Bona Dea, 
and her cult, which was probably affected by Grecian 
worship, but by the Romans was felt as quite indi- 
genous, though the form of worship in the third century 
may, as has been thought, have come from Tarentum (272 
B. c). That she was not all Greek, however, is shown by 
the fact that the Umbrians and Picenti also had a Cupra, 
or Good Goddess, identical with Bona Dea Fauna. In the 
city cult this local deity was identified with the Greek Damia 
and her rite was doubtless changed accordingly. However 
that may be, the worship at Rome in the third century was 
a picturesque ceremony. All night long women sacrificed 
and danced in honour of Bona Dea ; a pig and wine satisfied 
her not; she had to have music and the dance. She was 
looked upon as a healing power and only women might serve 
her: among whom, in the city cult, were the Vestals. A 
curious circumstance, indicating antiquity, is that, though 
wine was used freely, it had to be called milk, vinum lac 
nuncupetur. Connected with her city temple were the heal- 
ing serpents of Aesculapius and she was especially invoked 
by women in sickness ; but the country cult shows no indi- 
cation of this (Greek) combination. Her very general 
designation made it possible for various local Good God- 
desses to be identified with her. Another country goddess 
was Venus or Frutis, the goddess of garden and vineyard, 

1 Human sacrifice may have taken place at this rite, when the 
ills of the year were disposed of through a scape-goat. Reaction 
from apprehension of accumulated evil is always expressed by 
" saturnalian " abandon, though primitive people require little excuse 
for laxity. 



53^ THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

who was brought from Ardea and had a Roman temple as 
early as 295 b. c. She was later (287 b. c.) identified with 
Aphrodite of Eryx and her worship was set for August 17, 
her formal day. Later, under the designation felix, she 
was regarded as Fortuna ; but her original Roman role was 
that of a fruit-goddess rather than goddess of general 
fruitfulness and fortune. 

Other divinities played in the religious consciousness of 
Latium and Rome a part not to be overlooked, Volturnus or 
Tiberinus Pater, the " rolling " river and Volcanus, to whom 
were made many shrines and offerings, for, as has been said, 
he was destructive Fire (afterwards Hephaestus as god of 
smiths) and received such fearful worship as was given to 
pests. Maia or Maiestas was his " wife," as Moles is wife 
of Mars, his power. Furthermore, many gods or spirits 
are known, whose fanes remained much longer than their 
divinity and whose names even are sometimes in doubt. 
Such were the goddesses of birth, either of the year, when 
the Divalia honoured Diva Angerona, or of birth and death 
of man, Mana ; deities corresponding to the phallus, Mutunus 
and Tutunus ; or again the Dea Febris or spirit of disease, 
more particularly Tertiana and Quartana, the personifica- 
tion of the third and fourth fever days (malaria), and 
Mefitis, the power seen in mephitic exaltations, who had a 
grove and temple. 

Tarquin the Proud, according to tradition, dickered with 
the Sibyl, an Apollo oracle at Cumae, till he came into pos- 
session of the oracles called Sibyllina Remedia. They were 
acrostics, not intended to give oracles in regard to the future 
but to explain what remedies should be applied in case the 
State was in danger. They were kept at Rome but never 
used except by permission of the Senate. Soon after Tar- 
quin's death a famine at Rome suggested a consultation of 
this Sibylline wisdom and in consequence was introduced, 
for the first time formally, the worship of Greek gods, 
Apollo, Leto, and Artemis leading the Vv^ay, followed by 
Demeter, Dionysus, and Kore. Probably Apollo was intro- 



THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS 539 

duced as healer and Demeter (496 b. c.) as grain-goddess. 
As healer, Apollo was called Medicus and a temple was built 
for him in 423 b. c. Hercules, also as a healer, was brought 
into Rome in the same way in 399 b. c. ; later, his image was 
exhibited in the first recorded lectisternium or procession of 
gods reclining on couches in pairs. But in general not much 
addition of this sort was made to the pantheon through the 
fourth and fifth centuries, though Aesculapius was called in 
to heal another pest, and in this case the Romans sent an 
embassy to Epidaurus to get him (in the form of a snake) 
in 293 b. c, as later Hygeia (Salus) came in at command 
of the Sibyl in 180 b. c. Again, in 249 b. c, Dispater and 
Proserpina appeared, in Latinized forms of Pluton and 
Persephone, to still the fear of an ominous lightning-stroke 
and of war. Then, in 205 b. c, the Sibyl recommended the 
introduction of Magna Mater, that is, the Phrygian Cybele 
with her cult of the Asiatic goddess and her maimed lover 
Attis, who was subsequently associated with Tanith, the 
Carthaginian Dea Caelestis. Meantime the Sibyl had also 
managed to bring in the cult of Venus Erycina and of Bona 
Mens (Sophrosyne), to offset military disasters in 217 b. c. 
To anticipate, Sulla on his own account brought in a com- 
panion goddess to the Magna Mater deum Idaea when he 
brought back from his campaign in Asia Minor the cult of 
Ma (as Bellona), whose wild priests were called Fanatici, a 
term applied as well to the priests of Isis. She also was 
adopted by Sulla, but was looked on with suspicion till after 
the Christian era, when a temple was built for her at Rome.^ 
The long list of the Greek and Oriental deities flooding 
Rome from the third century includes also the Dea Syria 
or Suria, a form of Atargatis (and Hadad), and other 
forms of Sol Invictus. Sol was no old Roman god (he 
had a temple on the Aventine in 182 b. c), though he was 
worshipped by agriculturists; but as a foreign deity he 

1 Isis first had temples at Puteoli (c. 100 b. c.) and Pompeii. At 
PuteoH there was also a later Syrian congregation who worshipped 
"Jupiter of Beyrout," that is Baal of Heliopolis (c. 100 a. d.). 



540 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

played a great part, especially when identified with Mithra, 
and even before this, when the mad emperor Elagabal made 
all Rome worship his black stone for three years. The em- 
peror Aurelian built a temple to Sol (274 a. d.) and gave 
him a Roman college. Trade and the foreign legions also 
brought into Rome numerous Asiatic gods whose worship- 
pers were foreign soldiers and traders. These gods were 
called Jupiters with their qualifying local title, such as Jupi- 
ter Dolichenus (from Doliche in Syria), or Jupiter Da- 
mascenus, i.e., the god of Damascus worshipped as Jupiter. 
Mithra himself, well known to Plutarch, was patronized 
by Commodus with Isis in the third century a. d. In the 
second century a. d., Jupiter Sabazios, of Phrygia, was 
confused with Sabaoth and was thought to be the Jewish 
god. ^ 

This deluge of gods did not destroy the Roman State-cult, 
but it destroyed the simplicity of the old Roman religion, 
first by bringing in new gods thinly disguised under Roman 
names, then by lowering the idea of divinity, through exhibit- 
ing Greek idols as gods in human form in temples and in the 
lectisternium, and thirdly by introducing not only the 
Graecus ritits but all the strange ideas underlying the cult 
of Dionysus, Demeter, and other mystic gods. Now for the 
first time were the Romans taught ecstatic communion with 
deity, and were vexed with problems of the life hereafter.^ 
Now first they set out an epulum Jovis as part of the Ludi 
Romani and exhibited twelve gods in pairs in a lectisternium 
(217 B.C.). Now first they had new forms of Supplica- 
tiones, as ordered by the Sibyl, in processions of girls {ad 
omnia piilvinaria) , who visited the couches of all the gods. 
In 207 B. c, the Decemviri headed a procession of maidens 
who went about singing choric songs to Juno and dancing, 

1 In 249 B. c, the Etruscans introduced the Ludi Saeculares or 
Tarentini with the cult of chthonic divinities and the more sombre 
tone associated with this cult. The mystery of religion in the 
Greek sense had not till then been operative. The first deities in- 
troduced were mainly for healing purposes, like Apollo himself, but 
even he was identified with Vediovis, the underground (volcanic) 
form of Jupiter. 



THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS 541 

as they hung on to a connecting rope. This exhibition was 
nothing in the world but a Greek Panathenaea projected 
upon wondering Rome by the Greek Sibyl to offset a strange 
prodigy. One other important object was attained through 
the new rites. They popularized religion, the cults being 
such that all citizens might share in them. To the Romans 
the new religion also made an aesthetic appeal comparable 
to the effect produced on plain people by gorgeous pageantry. 
Pestilence and the fear of Hannibal were the chief rea- 
sons leading to this Hellenizing of Rome. But more influ- 
ential than Grecian cults were the Oriental religions im- 
ported into Rome. At first, the Megalesia rites of Magna 
Mater and her followers opened wide the door to every form 
of religious orgy. From the time when Rome gave herself 
to these cults, the old Roman religion existed only as a sub- 
ordinate survival. The real religion of Rome was now 
built on debased Greek ^ and Oriental superstition and mys- 
ticism, to which was added Greek philosophy. For with 
the Greek gods came to Italy Greek metaphysics. Euhem- 
erus and his interpretation of gods as merely men became 
familiar through the works of Ennius (200 b. c). In vain 
old Cato sought to revive the ancient superstitions and 
rustic religious formulas. Ennius himself said that, though 
divinities existed, they cared not for men. Varro, in the 
first century b. c, tried to save the life of the deities by in- 
terpreting them allegorically,''^ but neither Epicurean nor 
Stoic philosophy could restore the dying gods of Rome, 
which had converted even its Jupiter into a political rather 
than a religious aegis and now supported its old State-ritual 
merely as part of the administrative machine. Plautus 

1 It must be remembered that the Greek religion absorbed by- 
Rome was mainly that of c. 200, when it was far removed from its 
original form. When, for example, the Romans received the cult 
of Egyptian Isis they took it from Delos, where Isis had been wor- 
shipped as early as 300 b. c. 

2 The allegorical interpretation of gods was familiar to the Greeks. 
Theagenes of Rhegium, five hundred years before Christ, said that 
Homer's gods expressed faculties or natural elements. Vergil 
(after Chrysippus) calls Aether the omnipotent father. 



542 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

(254-184 B. c.) publicly ridiculed the genealogies of the 
gods and in the same era Cato already dared to express 
wonder that one augur could meet another without laugh- 
ing. Religion, in its received form at least, was regarded 
as hypocrisy or as a legitimate pretence, to disguise from 
the common people the truth they were intellectually in- 
capable of receiving. 

By the time of Lucretius (98-55 b. c), all the gods had 
become mere figures of speech to the learned. Venus to 
Lucretius was neither the genuine Italian god of gardens 
and vineyards nor the Aphrodite with whom she had become 
officially identified, but a cosmic power. His great poem 
De Rerum Natura was essentially atheistic; his endeavour 
was not to uphold religion but to crush superstition. Along- 
side of this Epicurean heterodoxy, which, expelled from the 
State in a short-lived spasm of orthodoxy in 173 b. c, had 
returned again, there flourished also the mysticism and cre- 
dulity which passed under the name of Pythagoras, whose 
system had been foisted upon the state by forged documents 
in 181 B. c. and had been officially rejected, but among 
the people had made great progress by its appeal to the 
unknown and its tempting doctrine of metempsychosis. 
Yet no Greek philosophy had so great and lasting an effect 
at Rome as that of the Stoics. Epicureanism, while it elimi- 
nated emotion as contrary to reason, also eliminated the ob- 
ject of emotion, the gods. Pythagoreanism, in the form 
brought into Rome from south Italy, appeared only as a 
maze of unfounded speculation too mystic for the hard- 
headed Roman to assimilate. On the other hand. Stoicism, 
which itself had absorbed what was best from the Academy, 
appealed to the Roman because it laid great weight on moral 
virtues under the allegorical interpretation of gods as ethical 
powers. As early as 140 b. c, Panaetius of Rhodes had 
taught Scipio and his intimates the principles of the Stoics, 
that the universe is the orderly product of mind inherent in 
matter, that what we call God is within all forces, as the 
sum of existence ; Jupiter exists as reason in a material uni- 



THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS 543 

verse, which reason man alone shares, and man may realize 
himself in communion with this sum of existence called 
God ; when he does so, he perceives that man's law is but a 
form of God's law. 

No doctrine could please a high-minded Roman, naturally 
law-abiding and morally inclined, better than the material- 
ism thus subtly disguised as religious philosophy. From 
about 200 B. c. to 200 A. D. it may be said to be the Roman 
philosophy par excellence. Cicero adopted Panaetius as his 
own and edited him under the form of (the first) two books 
entitled De OfUciis} At the same time the Oriental religions 
tended to inculcate a popular polytheism in which all gods 
represented one (pantheistic) principle. 

But the philosophers of Rome, at whose hands religion 
was reduced to speculative morality, represented only a 
class. Had her practical statesmen remained religious in 
the old sense, there would still have been a large body of 
influential men whose beliefs would have been felt as a re- 
ligious force by the people. But this was not the case. On 
the contrary, the practical statesmen converted the priestly 
colleges into political clubs. Sulla made himself master of 
Rome through using these colleges as part of his political 
machine. He could do this very easily, as most priests might 
hold public office and the priests as a class had complete con- 
trol of the State. They put the ban of religion on what they 
disliked and oracularly proclaimed their own desires as the 
wishes of the gods ; they could declare war and prevent it ; 
they could elect and reject as they would ; there was always 
a prodigy or augury at command. All the members of the 
Pontifici and Augures were put in office as political tools 
of the demagogue, who was himself the head of Rome's re- 
ligious world. There was no further need of " Sibylline 
Books " to debauch Roman religion when once Sulla had 
determined to become dictator.^ 

1 Ambrose later based his De OMciis on this model. 

2 The year before this happened the Sibylline books were destroyed 
by fire, when the Capitol where they were kept was burned (83 b. c). 
The later " Sibylline " texts included even Jewish writings. 



544 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

There has been space here only to show the general result 
of importing foreign gods into Rome. Roman religion dif- 
fers from the religion of Rome. The latter still retained 
the old forms, as it retained largely the old names of gods. 
But the Roman gods for the most part vanished under Greek 
names. On the other hand, Roman religion did not vanish 
in form but changed in spirit. For, despite the atheism of 
philosophy and the hypocrisy of politicians, there was of 
course a mass of people neither philosophers nor politicians 
who believed and felt something, not only during the hys- 
teria of the Punic wars and the machinations of the civil 
disorders but after excitement was quelled and life had 
resumed its usual course. We may perhaps envisage this 
popular religion best in two phases, before Hannibal and 
after Sulla. 

The first intrusion of Greek gods had no great effect; 
they did not come into the country in large numbers till 
Hannibal frightened the people into groping for new forms 
of divine assistance. Up till then we may say that religion 
was chiefly a matter of form rigidly adhered to on the lines 
of a legal contract between men and gods, though the deities 
were thought of as kindly protective spirits and there was 
not lacking a respondent human sentiment of cheerful grati- 
tude. But Greek religion not only changed the conception 
of deities and made them much more human in figure; it 
affected too the conception of the relation of man to divinity. 
We are accustomed to speak of Greek mysteries and orgies 
together and it is true that the orgiastic side of Dionysos 
worship, especially when reinforced by the grosser Oriental 
cults, did much to affect unfavourably the purer religious 
morality approved by the Roman State. But at the same 
time the mystery, which was not necessarily orgiastic in 
expression, introduced an entirely new idea, that of a life 
purified within, rather than without, and devoted to a god 
with whom man might abide in communion all his life if 
he would, and with whom he might be united after death. 
This was, in sum, the one tremendous change introduced 



THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS 545 

by foreign cults at Rome. How large a circle it affected 
we cannot know, but it was an entirely new presentation 
of religion and, so to speak, it accorded religiously with what 
had been taught philosophically by the Stoics, so that emo- 
tion and intelligence met in a new sphere of thought destined 
as it chanced to have much influence on the religion of the 
future. Another element also is to be noticed in the new 
religion of Rome. It is logically to be obtained both from 
the philosophy of the Stoics and from that church-idea 
which enveloped the brothers of the mystery. For when 
religion became personal instead of political and the wor- 
shippers felt themselves bound together not as a clan or 
town but as companions in a service to a god, there was 
bound to arise a new idea of kinship, a spiritual brother- 
hood quite different from the Fratres of the collegia. This 
in turn led, or might easily lead, to a feeling of human 
brotherhood, a note not altogether rare in antiquity but lead- 
ing further to the feeling of appreciation for all animal life 
and perhaps to the gentle spirit nowhere so perceptible as in 
the verse of Vergil.^ Thus a kindly sympathy was added to 
the religion of hope and to the spiritual conception of man 
accented by the mystery-religion. These new elements, 
united with that ingrained sense of duty which was natively 
Roman and that love of order and dignity which exhibits 
itself in the Roman ritual, all combined to prepare the world 
for a religion in which every one of these elements is promi- 
nent, so prominent in fact that it was easy to turn the stately 
Roman liistratio into the lustration-ceremony of the Ro- 
man Catholic Church, to substitute for observance of the 
dead the kindly prayers for the dead, to convert local deities 
into saints, and adopt bodily such ritual practices as the 

1 Vergil, perhaps influenced by Augustus, still clings to the genuine 
Roman gods in his poetic lectures on farming. Ceres, Pales, Sil- 
vanus, Vesta (who guards the Tibur), and Saturnus are recognized 
by him as deities to be worshipped by the farmer and shepherd, as 
well as rain-giving Jupiter, though he also favours the cult of 
Bacchus and other Greek gods. To Mars he alludes only as the 
" impious " god who destroys the farmer's peace. 



54^ THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

use of acolytes, of incense and holy water, and the reverent 
remembrance still potent on December 25th. 

With the fall of the Republic, religion, while it still 
reached after new cults, reverted also to old forms. One 
movement, however, was untrammelled, the other was dic- 
tated by authority. Augustus, namely, having converted 
a rotten republic into a precarious empire, sought to guide 
his people into safe pastures, where peace and prosperity 
would appear as imperial trapping. We need not inquire 
how religious was the emperor whose scepticism is as well 
known as his piety. It was his to bring back a people, long 
harassed by internal dissensions, to quiet stability and to 
impress upon them the right of Augustus of the gens Julia 
so to do. He set up his own Genius to be worshipped beside 
the Lares of every city vicus; he practically invented Julius 
as his family god ; he made the world acknowledge Augustus 
to be a divinity. At the same time, he urged a return to 
old simplicity and country life and withal to old religious 
ideas, rebuilding the temples of moribund gods and reviv- 
ing the old religious machinery, such as the ceremony per- 
formed by the Fratres Arvales. He himself became Ponti- 
fex Maximus (12 B.C.) and took charge therewith of the 
cult of Vesta ; but made it a cult of his own Vesta or house 
(as Vesta Augusta). Of the Greek gods, he made most of 
Apollo, because this divinity had saved him at Actium, and 
Mars he worshipped, but as Ultor, because this divinity had 
avenged Augustus ; while he built quite new temples to these 
gods and also to Venus as mother of Augustus' family. He 
encouraged the Mantuan poet to turn the people from poli- 
tics to agriculture with the Georgics ^ and with the Aeneid 
to imbue them with the Venus-Augustus legend of an em^ 
pire fashioned in heaven and brought to earth by the divine 
man, with whom the regenerated world should be born anew ; 

1 Vergil admits the divinity of Augustus in the Eclogues, deus 
nobis haec otia fecit. In the first three centuries of our era this 
" Roman peace " was an important factor in the growth of Chris- 
tianity, as it produced a cosmopolitan equality which levelled old 
class and race distinctions. 



THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS 547 

for which purpose he dictated to another poet the substance 
of the Carmen Saeculare (17 B.C.). Ovid, to please him- 
self, made the gods ridiculous and, to please the emperor, 
wrote the Fasti. The evil Augustus did lived after him. 
Human gods continued to be made of dead and living em- 
perors, who sometimes also deified their women and even 
their favourites (Hadrian thus deified the youth Antinous), 
till there were nearly forty of these monstrous gods besides 
the bizarre Jupiters that streamed into the city from every 
point in the Orient, who were really not Jupiters at all but 
local Oriental gods worshipped by the various soldiers and 
merchants quartered at Rome. The objections felt against 
the Bacchus-worshippers, which had led to a decree against 
them in 186 b. c, and against the Chaldaeans, a general name 
for Oriental astrologers, which had led to their being ex- 
pelled from Italy in 139 B. c, had given place to enthusiastic 
welcome, so that Caesar himself restored the Bacchic cult, 
withal mixed with Oriental excess. Thus, even when no 
welcome was extended, no further objection was felt to for- 
eign cults, which remained unmolested, provided the liberal- 
ity which permitted their worshippers to practise their own 
religion was met with a spirit liberal enough to worship also 
the god of Rome. It was a surprise to the Romans to find 
that Christians would not do this, as it was a shock to Au- 
gustus to find that his godhead, recognized by all the world 
besides, was not accepted by the Druids and the Jews. 

The Roman world at this time was in sympathy with a 
belief in one divine power, a God who embraced in himself 
numerous forms of different gods ; but the Christian mono- 
theistic idea excluded all gods save one, which proved a 
stumbling-block to polytheist and pantheist. 

All through the time of the early emperors, however, 
despite the overwhelming sea of new cults, the old rites 
remained in force, till Theodosius in the fourth century put 
an end to the private worship of the Lares, Penates, and 
Genius. There were occasional outbreaks of zeal against 
Christians, who were persecuted by the mad boy Nero 



548 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

(54-68 A. D.), and philosophers, who were banished from 
Rome by Domitian (81-96 a. d.) ; but these were personal 
sporadic whimsies. M. Aurelius (161-180 a. d.) reinstated 
philosophy, which even under Nero was embodied in such 
teachers as Seneca and Epictetus. In this era too the peri- 
patetic philosopher became a sort of household priest and 
comforter, in whose conversation and precepts the living 
found relief and the dying hope. Philosophers wandered 
about as lecturers and preachers, like the beggar monks of 
India and the Capuchins, among whom of course there were 
charlatans justifying satirical attacks. To these philoso- 
phers, however, religion was not so much a matter of meta- 
physics as of practical ethics. Closet philosophers, too, 
taught that man should be sacred to man and an object of 
pity and love, so that it has become a question whether 
Seneca was not really influenced by Christian belief, as the 
circumstances of his life made quite possible.^ t 

Plutarch in the second century'^ discussed the relation of 
man to God like a Christian theologian. In the next cen- 
tury, the cult of Mithra almost submerged Christianity. As 
Sol Invictus his festival led to the Christian celebration of 
Christmas on December 25, while Mithra-worship itself was 
a quasi monotheism with rites closely resembling those of 
the Christian church. As a popular Roman religion it be- 
came in fact the forerunner of Christianity, which later in 

^ St. Paul was tried before his brother ; but many scholars oppose 
the idea that this " heathen Christian " was really influenced by 
Christian thought. 

2 Plutarch (50-125 a. d.) is an instructive example of the union 
of high and low in the religious atmosphere of this period. While 
an eminent theologian, teaching " not different gods but one divine 
Reason, Providence," he believed in dreams, oracles, and such mani- 
festations of the divine will, as strongly as any old peasant. Prob- 
ably superstitions lasted longer than religion with many Romans. 
Pliny says that most Romans including himself repeated charms and 
spells to protect themselves against accidents. It is doubtful whether 
Vergil really believed in the Stoic Divine Mind. He says : " Some 
say that there is part of a divine mind even in bees, and' there is 
no place for death," viva volare omnia, but this is what quidam 
dixere (^Georgics, 4, 22of.). 



THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS 549 

turn became the religion of Rome. It emphasized morality 
and made every man a soldier of a church militant. It ab- 
sorbed sun-worship, otherwise recognized (when Elagabalus 
brought to Rome the black stone symbol of his sun-god at 
Emesa), but made the sun merely a symbol of divinity; it 
adapted the already popular worship of Fortuna to its own 
ends, and even made the State-religion a matter of concern 
to women by combining with itself the cult of the originally 
licentious Mother-goddess, although it appealed at the same 
time to those who demanded ethical purity as a condition 
of membership in its secret organization.^ It was at once 
a religion, a philosophy, a school of morality, and a secret 
society, and many of its elements remained permanent fac- 
tors of Roman religion even after the downfall of Mithra- 
ism itself. In this syncretism of all religions at Rome it is 
not strange that the new religion of the Christians was rec- 
ognized officially. The pious cousin of Elagabalus, Alex- 
ander Severus (d. 235 a. d.), who conciliated all religious 
parties and revered all gods, built a temple to Isis and wished 
to build one to Christ, but the auspices prevented him from 
accomplishing this intention. His own private religion ap- 
pears to have consisted in the worship of his own ancestors 
and of the great benefactors of man, some of lower order 
such as Vergil and Cicero, others of higher rank, among 
whom were Alexander the Great, Abraham, Orpheus, and 
Jesus Christ. Here, truly, may be said to end all Roman 
religion, though Severus' attitude differed less in spirit than 
in form from the worship of the Manes and the Lares, 
the kind ghosts and helpful spirits of Rome's early regard.^ 

1 This seeming paradox is solved by the fact that the orgiastic 
religions of the East fell on unfruitful soil in Rome as far as their 
native erotic character was concerned. Thus Oriental cults gradu- 
ally adopted Roman morality, and were influential mainly as a 
spiritualizing force in pantheistic form. Isis, c. 150 a. d,, is the 
divine power in the world, called the Mother Goddess, Venus, Juno, 
etc., pure divinity. So too the Mother-cult was concentrated on the 
idea of resurrecton (symbolized in the Hilaria of March 25th). 

2 Later emperors, however, like Diocletian, persecuted the Chris- 



550 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

There was only one step further to go and that was taken 
by Constantine, when he not only admitted Christianity as 
a Roman religion but gradually gave it his preference among 
the confused cults of the Roman empire. In the years 361- 
363 A. D. Julian the Apostate reverted to the doctrines of 
ancient days and built temples to the old gods, who were, 
however, already dead ; but in 392 Theodosius put a formal 
end to all pagan cults. 

But though therewith the cults of Rome were banished, 
Roman religion persisted ; first, in its lower forms as super- 
stitions still potent in their native habitat, though perhaps 
these may be said to be universal rather than Roman. But 
at any rate they were preserved, from a primitive Italian 
origin, after passing through the Roman mind. Then, in the 
forms of those remote analogous gods who through Roman 
military influence had been identified with Roman originals, 
fugitive forms, which exist only as echoes, like the Hercules 
Magusanus of the Batavians. Thirdly, in the saints, as 
well as in the ritual observances already referred to as in- 
herited by the Christian Church,^ and above all in the Roman 
realistic religious spirit, which appears in the early Roman 
Church fathers, whose systematizing tendency conceived of 
religion ethically and legally rather than metaphysically and 
idealistically. So, although what has been said by an emi- 
nent scholar seems to be true, namely, that the Romans if 
well-advised would have feared the Greeks bearing gifts and 
that, after they had renounced their gods, they won the 
whole world but lost their own soul, yet in very truth the 
spirit of Roman religion was not wholly lost nor was the 
gift of the Greeks wholly destructive. What was finest in 
the Greek religion as in that of the Orientals entered into 
Rome, which, however, still preserved its own indomitable 

tians generally, as they had been persecuted sporadically by Nero 
(see under Christianity). 

1 Some Roman and Greek deities have become saints. Venus is 
a Sicilian saint dancing before the Lord ! Augustine tells us that 
memorial services in honor of the martyrs virtually relapsed into 
heathen worship. 



THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS 551 

spirit, the spirit of St. Augustine, to whom religion was 
primarily law, though tempered with mystic ernotion. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

H. R. Hall, Aegean Archaeology, New York, 1914. 

W. W. Fowler, The Religious Experience of the Roman People, 
London, 191 1; The Roman Festivals of the Period of the 
Republic, London, 1899. 

Georg Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Rbmer, Munich, 1912. 

J. B. Carter, The Religion of Nunia, London, 1906. 

Gaston Boissier, La iin du paganisme, Paris, 6th ed., 1909. 

A. Bouche-Leclercq, Hist aire de la divination dans Vantiquite, 
Paris, 1879-1882. 

Gilbert Murray, The Stoic Philosophy, New York, 1915. 

F. Cumont, The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, Chi- 
cago, 191 1 ; Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and 
Romans, New York, 19 12. 



CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 

THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 

The religion of Christ stands to Christianity somewhat as 
that of Buddha to Buddhism. In each, interpretation be^ 
gotten of speculation embraced alien thought and bore 
hybrid descendants, some harking back to original features, 
others far removed from any likeness to the founder. In 
other regards also the two religions are similar. As Buddha 
has been resolved into a sun-myth, so Jesus Christ has been 
explained as cosmic truth in legendary form, a Gilgamesh 
or other divine hero. The wisdom of Buddha has been re- 
ferred to Zoroaster and to Moses ; that of Jesus to Seneca 
and Epictetus. Finally, the life, temptation, miracles, para- 
bles, and even the disciples of Jesus have been derived di- 
rectly from Buddhism. In general, these speculations are 
based on similarities too slight to consider, or too rare to 
affect a general judgment. It was not till the second cen- 
tury that Buddhistic teaching affected the story of Jesus. 
Within almost a generation of his death, the words and 
activities of Jesus and of his immediate followers were com- 
mitted to writing. The account is too near the event to 
justify doubt as to the historicity of Jesus. He was no 
myth. His birth, in current opinion, occurred a few years 
(perhaps six to eight) before the usually accepted Year of 
Our Lord. It is not spoken of as a supernatural event by 
the author of the oldest Gospel nor by Jesus himself; nor 
by any of his disciples in their conversations is it referred to 
as a proof of his divinity. Paul, too, is silent regarding it. 
But as an early article of faith it was introduced into the 
opening chapter of Luke and the introduction prefaced to 
Matthew.^ 

^ The synoptic Gospels appear to derive from precepts compiled 

552 



THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 553 

Apocryphal writings, some of which were at first regarded 
as authoritative Scripture/ show that many impossible tales 
soon gathered about the personality of Jesus and his mother. 
His life was a centre upon which converged religious specu- 
lation. Some have thought that for this reason his per- 
sonaUty must be fictitious. But because myths gather about 
a person it does not follow that the person is a myth. On 
the other hand, no one who knows history, especially Ori- 
ental history, will doubt that the heirs of the founders of all 
rehgions have framed their portraits in golden legends, such 
as the tale of the mediaeval Kings of the East. To see how 
one such history was made shows how other history may 
have been made. This myth of the kings was invented 
piously to honour Christ and it is not without its inner 
truth, for it strikes the note, made resonant by Paul, that 
the Glad Tidings concerned not the Jews alone, but all the 
known world. 

In its first form the legend says that wise men of the East, 
presumably Zoroastrian Magi, were led to the cave where 
the Child was born. This was the cave, one of the Church 
Fathers tells us, in which the venerated Mother-goddess of 
the heathen bore her divine child. It was centuries before 
the sages became *' Kings of Orient." Epiphany also, taken 
from the cult of Dionysos, became a day (Jan. 6) more 
celebrated than Christmas, which latter date (as Dec. 25) 
was indeed not fixed till the fourth century, when it was 

about the time of the greater Pauline epistles (50-60 a. d.) and 
from anecdotes reported by Peter. The oldest Gospel is that of 
Mark (c, 75 a. d.). The present Gospels of Matthew and Luke 
revert to a source designated as Q by Biblical scholars. In Mark 
the precept-side gives way to the emphasis laid on the power and 
authority of Jesus; Matthew and Luke lay more weight on the 
teachings of Jesus. The basis of Acts xvi-xxii may be dated c. 62 
A. D. According to R. W. Husband, The Prosecution of Jesus, 
Princeton Press, 1916, the trial of Jesus took place Friday, April 
3, 33 A. D. 

1 Conversely, Hebrews (written 81-85 A. d.) and Revelation were 
still held as un-scriptural in the second century, though Hebrews 
was "edifying." Montanus (see below) may have caused Revela- 
tion to be looked upon with suspicion. 



554 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

taken from the Mithra-cult. The first step made the Magi 
three in number, representing Europe and Africa as well 
as Asia, whence in mediaeval art one is represented as a 
Negro. Western tradition of the second century fixes the 
number of Magi as three, but Syrian w^riters assume twelve. 
They did not become kings till the sixth century, doubtless 
that the Scripture might be fulfilled (Ps. Ixx. lo). 

Palestine, long distressed, had many would-be Messiahs, 
some deluded, some imposters, trading on Jewish hope. 
That the Messiah was divine, that the earth was made by 
him in a pre-existent state, was now the conception of the 
Jewish world (see 2 Esdras, vi. if.). Jesus was persuaded 
that he was the Messiah (Christ), yet he looked not for a 
worldly kingdom, nor for the realization of the later Jewish 
ideal, w^hich was built on the Law and saw God afar off: 
but, with the early prophets, he conceived of God as present, 
speaking now in the heart. At the same time he was not 
uninfluenced by that wider idea of God which came after 
the worship of Yahweh as a national deity. He is not the 
son of Yahweh but of God; yet he saw God as a Father 
in heaven, who loved his children and demanded obedience 
in inner life rather than in outer form. He accepted also 
the later teaching in regard to the soul and resurrection. 
It has been imagined by some scholars that Jesus was in- 
debted to the Essenes (above, p. 446) for his teachings. 
But their ideal was utterly opposed to his. They fled the 
world; he consorted with all; they did not proselytize; he 
sent out missionaries ; they emphasized ceremonial purity ; 
he cared little for it. His antecedents were rather those 
old Hebrews whose disdain of cult in comparison with spir- 
itual religion found an echo in his own teaching. There 
had also been great spiritual progress among the Jews for 
a century before Jesus.^ It is well to realize that Jesus, the 
last of the Jews, that is, of the great Palestine Jews, even 
in his words is closely linked with his people's past, both 

1 See especially Enoch, the Book of Wisdom, and the (Saddu- 
cean) Ecclesiasticus, in the centuries just before Christ. 



THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 555 

remote and near. Thus with one Psalmist he promised that 
those who loved God should find joy in him (Ps. v. ii), and 
with another, who said '' the meek shall inherit the earth " 
(Ps. xxxvii. II ), he was in full accord. As the Psalmist 
cries, '' I will love thee, O Lord," and again, " God is the 
father of the fatherless " (Ps. xviii. i ; Ixviii. 5), so he taught 
that God is the heavenly Father whom man should love. 
The "poor and fatherless " (Ps. Ixxxii. 3) were ever in his 
thought and with the cry, " Thou art my Father, my God, 
and the rock of my salvation," words that revert to Psalmist 
and the Song of Moses (Ps. Ixxxix. 26 and Deut. xxxii), 
he comforted himself in trial. From this source was drawn 
the tender image of the nestlings under brooding wings 
(Ps. xci. 4). The humility of man, the greatness, yet the 
love, of God as Father, are all pre-Christian elements, as 
they are outstanding features of the religion of Jesus, 
who, however, taught his law of love and love as a law 
more surely, because more explicitly and more serenely, 
than did his remote ancestors or his immediate predecessor, 
John the Baptist. In fine, he freed the gold from the dross ; 
in his teaching he took the best and truest ideas handed 
down from of old and made them the supreme test of a re- 
ligious spirit. What they implied, he expressed : if God be 
Father of all, then shall each son be brother to each. It is 
this which created the " beloved community " and gave the 
Church its unifying power. 

Jesus is represented as performing miracles, some of 
which would be accepted today as due to the curative power 
of a strong spirituaHty, while others came in response to the 
usual Eastern demand for marvels, which have always been 
required of a religious leader. Jesus himself deprecated 
such signs and the Biblical narrative intimates that they 
were often the result of subjective belief : Mk. vi. 5 : "He 
could there do no mighty work " ; because of their unbe- 
lief, Matt. xiii. 58. Paul, too, never mentions miracles as 
a proof of Christ's divine power. But he may not have 
heard of them; or he regarded them as the inevitable ac- 



55^ THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

companiment of spiritual potency, which in the popular 
apprehension might manifest itself as easily in multiplying 
fishes as in curing disease or expelling devils.^ 

Paul's reticence is eloquent also when he tells the story 
of the resurrection, which interested him more than any 
event in the history of Jesus, for he omits some of the strik- 
ing details given by the synoptic gospels, which are, indeed, 
not in complete accord as to the time (whether the resur- 
rection occurred on the third day or after three days).^ 

At this point it is thought by some scholars that there 
has been fusion with the much older resurrection-story 
which long before Jesus' day had held the East enthralled. 
As in the later contact with the Mithra-cult, it is not pos- 
sible to say definitively whether the later religion borrowed 
from the earlier; but as the two traditions cover the same 
time and same territory, and present unusual similarity, no 
historian has a right to ignore the striking resemblance of 
the general faith with that resurrection-faith which began 
with Peter and Paul, when they made the crucified Jesus as 
resurrected Christ an Avatar of God. The cult of Cybele 
and Attis coalesced in some regards with that of Mithra. 
Its Megalesia were rites of the spring equinox. They began 

1 Curing blindness, stilling storm, walking on water, turning 
water to wine, are miracles mentioned also of others, by Jewish 
and Greek writers. Turning water into wine is a miracle of 
Dionysos, whose epiphany was thus marked on Jan. 6. Compare 
Bousset, Kyrios Christos, Gottingen, 1913, p. 72 f. For Buddhist 
parallels, see above, p. 195, note. 

2 So the author of the fourth Gospel (c. 100) omits the tempta- 
tion and the eucharist at the Supper, This Evangelist differs from 
the others not only in introducing the interpretation of Christ as 
the manifestation of the Logos, divine Reason, but also in seeing 
Jesus more remotely, in making him active at Jerusalem rather 
than in the country, etc. Paintings of scenes from this Gospel are 
found as early as 180 a. d. It may have been in use in Rome at the 
beginning of this century. The Logos of "John" is not that of 
Philo Judaeus; it is the One Logos as contrasted with the many 
"powers" and logoi of Philo. The two probably drew from the 
common stock of ideas current at the time. "After three days," 
in the Roman Gospel of Mark, may reflect the older resurrection- 
story of Attis-Osiris-Dionysos, originally one. 



THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 557 

with the carrying of reeds, among which Attis, like Moses 
and Sargon of Akkad, had been exposed, and continued with 
a fast of nine days. At the end of this fast was portrayed 
the "procession of the tree," with lamentation and self- 
inflicted mutilations, initiating the " day of blood," which 
represented the god's death. Then, after three days, came 
the '* day of joy," which represented the resurrection of the 
god, and was celebrated with glad cries of " Attis is risen." 
A weak Greek version of the cult lingers in Theocritus' de- 
scription of the Adonis festival at Alexandria. About 200, 
Clement of Alexandria was initiated into these Cybele mys- 
teries before he became a Father of the Church, and Ter- 
tullian joined a sect which was founded by an old Cybele 
worshipper. The mysteries, it will be remembered (above, 
p. 541 ) , were brought to Rome c. 200 b. c.^ But, though 
the idea of a risen god was common, that of a god suffer- 
ing for us, that of the " blood shed for us," was new. 

Paul, before whose death, 64 A. d., the new religion had 
spread over the Roman empire, was the founder of Christ- 
ianity in distinction from the religion of Jesus. His Chris- 
tology is not drawn from the apocalyptic literature of Pales- 
tine but from the Wisdom literature of Alexandria. He 
saw the Gospel-story in the light of his knowledge of Greek 
and Alexandrine philosophy and of the divine mysteries 
current in Greece, and thus gave a new interpretation of 
Christ, who, as the risen Lord and Spirit of God, fills the 
believer and makes him one with the Lord. In so doing 
he discarded his ovv^n earlier apocalyptic interpretation of 
Jesus (as Jewish Messiah). In Paul there is still vibrant 
the spirit of Jesus (love, meekness, joy, faith inspire it) ; 
but this spirit is already over-laid with intellectualism. His 
preoccupation is not with the life and words of Jesus, but 
with the spirit of God revealed in the resurrection of Christ. 
Converted by a Christophany, he saw Christ ever above the 

1 Admixture of other cults such as that of Osiris is historically- 
possible. Later Ephesian Mariolatry probably owes much to ab- 
sorption of the local Artemis-cult, of which Paul speaks. 



55^ THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

earth. Scholar and student of Gamaliel, the pupil of Hillel 
(above, p. 447), but also a student of the older Wisdom 
(Tarsus where he was born was a seat of philosophy), he 
desired to prove his faith to the Gentiles. Paul does not 
dwell on, though he recognizes, Jesus as the teacher of a 
new religious life and ideal ; rather he cites his resurrection 
as a proof of life after death. For he that believes in the 
risen Lord becomes also immortal.^ Paul even uses O. T. 
phrases of the Lord Yahweh as if they were of the Lord 
Christ. 

The statement of Ben Sira (c. 180 B.C.), that "from a 
woman was the beginning of sin and because of her we all 
die " (xxv. 24), appears in Paul in the form that death and 
sin entered the world through Adam and man inherits death 
and sin till Christ dies for man. Jesus says not a word of 
this origin of sin, and the old Prophets, who talk much of 
man's depravity, do not suggest it. Paul also extends the 
idea of the new man possessed by Christ to the Church, 
which is the body of Christ. This conception at a later 
date greatly strengthened Church authority. Paul's chief 
theological features are justification by faith, atonement, 
opposition to legal Judaism, and the mystic idea of the Spirit 
of Christ possessing man (thus driving out the evil spirit 
obsessing him) and making the believer able to cast out 
devils, speak prophetic words, etc. In close connexion with 
this mystic view, baptism drives off evil spirits and so may 
be performed " for the dead " (to free them from evil 
spirits, I Cor. xv. 29). Moreover, as sacrifice to devils 
brings fellowship with devils (i Cor. x. 20), so communion 
through sacrifice gives divine power. 

Whether eventually Mazdean or Babylonian, the eschatol- 
ogy of the first century is a direct inheritance from Judaism. 
Jewish conceptions as to Paradise and Abraham's Bosom, 

1 As genuine epistles of Paul may be conservatively recognized 
the First to the Thessalonians, Corinthians, Galatians, Romans, 
PhiHppians, Philemon, Colossians (and Ephesians?). Some extrem- 
ists hold that all the Pauline epistles are spurious. 



THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 559 

the new Jerusalem, with the four and twenty elders, the 
angels of the gates, etc., present nothing new.^ 

At the beginning of the second century (to which period 
may be referred the epistles to Timothy and Titus, the Gos- 
pels of John and Peter, the second epistle of Peter and those 
of Jude and John, of Pseudo-Barnabas and Ignatius, the 
Didache, and the Shepherd of Hermas), Gnostic philos- 
ophy attempted to absorb Christianity and give it out again 
as a cosmic scheme. Nature-religions still opposed the 
faith. Jewish Christians perverted it. Imperialism con- 
fronted it with the one universal worship (that of the em- 
peror). Episcopal power was now beginning to form, 
though the Church was still regarded as a body of be- 
hevers rather than as a united organization. Pseudo-Bar- 
nabas broke with the Jews through his teaching that the old 
Law had been not a preliminary preparation but a pun- 
ishment for their obstinacy. Clement of Rome conciliated 
the apostolic contention as to faith and works; he depre- 
cated sects. " Love (he says) knows naught of schism." 
In the West, Rome began to show its authority, as seat of 
Peter and Paul. " Rome, in a presidency of love, our 
teacher," says Ignatius sweetly.^ He exalts the bishop as 
representing God, though he recognizes no apostolic suc- 
cession or priestly function of the clergy. He condemns 
Gnosticism for overwhelming Christian truth and (the 
Docetic) heresy,^ which made Christ's sufferings only ap- 

1 Compare Ezek. xlviii. sgi. and Rev. xxi. I2f. and see Clemen, 
Primitive Christianity and its non-Jewish Sources, New York, 1912, 
p. I02f. For Paul's language reflecting Greek thought, see 2 Cor. 
xii. 2f. and Gal. vi. 17. The descent into hell is a refinement of a 
Mandaean mystery. 

2 Ignatius (c. 115?) first speaks of " Christianism " (Christianity 
as a body and as a state of mind), of " eucharist," and of the 
" Catholic " Church : " Where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic 
(universal) Church." He is also the first to mention the virgin 
birth (outside the N. T.), and to speak of Jesus as iatros, a mys- 
tery-term used w^ith soter (Asklepios). 

3 Docetism was an old doctrine. Helen's " imaginary life " formed 
the basis for the earliest Greek " recantation " of heresy (the 
Palinode). Docetism is also found in Buddhism. 



560 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

parent. He has no trinitarian formula (that in Matthew is 
late) or theory of transubstantiation. 

The Didache, perhaps c. 120 (possibly before the second 
century), enjoins baptism (for adults) which is performed 
in living (running) water after a two days' fast, immersion 
preferred; if this be impracticable, one is sprinkled, with 
cold or warm water. The Love-feast (later abandoned) 
here appears to be one with the Lord's Supper, at which the 
formula was : " We thank Thee, our Father, for the life 
and knowledge which Thou hast made known to us through 
Jesus, thy servant." ^ The Didache recommends confes- 
sion of sins in the church and communistic fellowship in 
property. Polycarp, reputed pupil of John and teacher 
of Irenaeus, in the middle of this century reviles a " son 
of Satan " who may be Marcion. This Marcion, the 
first reformer, eliminated from " Scripture " everything 
except Paul and an expurgated edition of Luke. To Jus- 
tin also (martyred between 163 and 167) Marcion was 
an advocatus diaboli.^ Clearly strife was already rife in 
the Church. To Justin, Christ is Son of God (but " in the 
second place") made manifest as the divine intelligence, 
hitherto shown less decidedly in Moses, Socrates, etc., who 
also were forms of the Logos. Acceptance of Christ with 
Justin is acceptance of his message, not of him as a meta- 
physical proposition. Every man according to his actions in 
life receives eternal punishment or salvation. Sin is for- 
given when one fasts, prays for forgiveness, and is baptized. 
Within a few years of Justin's attack on Marcion (139- 
140), the Shepherd of Hermas shows a lenient attitude 
toward teachings inclining to Gnosticism (the author con- 

1 The post-exilic Isaiah uses of the martyred people the phrase 
ebed Yahweh, " servant of God," translated ^ats deov^ hence vi-o^ 
Oeov^ as Trais means son as well as servant. This is Paul's con- 
ception of Jesus as the pre-existent Christ, yet, though Lord, the 
suffering servant of God. The conventional ideal of Matt. xi. 
25-30; xxiii. 34-39 is dravi^n from Alexandrine Wisdom literature. 

2 ]\Iarcion's denial that Jesus was the Messiah led to the baptismal 
formula which afterwards produced the " Apostles' Creed." 



THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 56 1 

fuses, as did Paul, 2 Cor, iii. 17, the Son with the Spirit) 
and teaches that works of supererogation win glory. For 
generations this work was regarded as Scripture (it was 
appealed to as authority for keeping Easter on Sunday).^ 
Yet *' John " had already formulated the creed to be : 
Christ was the Logos, Creator, God. *' The Word was 
God." All else was matter of definition. In point of fact, 
it was no longer a question whether Christology, the doc- 
trine about Christ, or the teachings of Jesus were the kernel 
of religion. Christology had won. Those who denied the 
metaphysical doctrine became unchristian. 

Yet sundry heresies arose in this period, which has been 
called that of the Defenders of the Faith (Apologists). 
Not only did the Jewish Christians, chiefly Ebionites, deny 
Christ's divinity (other Jewish sects were the Elkasites and 
Nazarenes), but there sprang up in the second century 
the Alogoi, a Christian sect that denied that Christ was 
the Logos. Besides doctrinal difference, extravagance in 
discipline occurred. About 150, Montanus, a Cybele priest 
of Phrygia, became converted and wandered about drum- 
ming up recruits with two female companions, proclaiming 
himself to be the Spirit of Truth (John xvi. 13), who had 
come with a new discipline better than that of Christ, as he 
was a prophet superior to Christ. This discipline was 
strongly tinged with Cybele-elements, ecstatic manifesta- 
tions and extreme self-mortification, in order to meet prop- 
erly the second coming of Christ. Montanus made great 
use of Revelation ; his religious phase was distinctly re- 
vivalistic; he and his women with their exhortations and 
music must have had a Salvation Army effect. It affected 
the fiery African Tertullian, who became suspect on account 
of his allegiance to Montanism. The sober Church depre- 
cated its extravagance, as it also opposed the roaming 

1 By this time, although the collection of the N.T. was not settled 
till the third or fourth century, the Christian belief in the trinity, 
in Christ born of the Virgin Mary, as son of God, in the resurrec- 
tion of the body, and the doctrine of atonement was fully estab- 
lished. 



562 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

" prophets," who tramped through the country begging for 
gold but unwilHng to work for a meal. The Didache warns 
against them: '* If they will not work, give them nothing." 
Asceticism did not become a marked religious factor till 
the fourth century. 

Two great teachers of the West appeared at the close of 
the second century, Irenaeus of Lyons, who wrote against 
heresies (181-189), and TertuUian of Carthage (c. 150- 
225). Irenaeus believed in the speedy coming of Christ. 
He believed also that Adam had made mortal what God 
had made immortal and that Christ re-made man immortal, 
thus redeeming him. Redemption generally in the East (the 
Church was still practically Eastern) meant not from sin 
but from death. TertuUian, a greater man, who founded a 
sect of his own in Africa, opposed the " mottled Christi- 
anity " (mixed with philosophy) of Antioch and Alexandria. 
Christianity to him meant a change of heart, " new^ law, new 
promise," not a theory of Christ's nature. TertuUian first 
used Latin as a medium of Church teaching ; he also showed 
the Latin spirit and appealed to Church tradition as author- 
ity and guardian of truth. He had a deep sense of sin and 
of the need of salvation, which is won largely by good 
works. Confession and self -mortification follow baptism 
as means of grace. Unforgivable sin (e. g. adultery) leads 
to excommunication. In all this the doctrine of the later 
Church is anticipated. TertuUian (against Praxeas) first 
used the word trinity in its present sense and anticipated the 
creed of the next century. But his view that the Church was 
the body of those who had experienced a change of heart, 
was not that of the Bishop of Rome (Kallistus, c. 220), 
who treated adultery as forgivable and regarded the Church 
as a body of the baptized, that is, a corporate group of me- 
chanically admitted members, which group served as an ark 
of safety. Rome, whose founders, Romulus and Remus, 
now gave up their places on the calendar of feast-days, to 
Peter and Paul, as founders of the new Rome, was already 
becoming authoritative. She stood alone in the West, while 



THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 563 

the Eastern Church had several schools, none of which 
would yield priority to another. In the third century the 
Western priesthood became organized, mediating between 
man and God ; as the Supper became the Mass, a sacrifice 
performed by the priest. 

Gnosticism, to which Tertullian objected, did not oppose 
Christianity but professed to interpret it. First of all, the 
Gnostics believed in development, not in creation. Irenaeus 
declares that " God alone can make something out of noth- 
ing " (de nihilo fecisfi coeliim et terram, says Augustine), 
but the Gnostic regarded nihil ex nihilo as axiomatic. The 
world is evil ; ^ it is " made " only by an evil being opposed 
to God and man's soul, which is now bound by planetaiy 
spirits and can be released by Christ's knowledge of the 
mysteries. Paul's use of stoicheia and kosmokratores ( Gal. 
iv. 3; Eph. i. 21) is Gnostic (compare allusions to prob- 
able Gnosticism in i Tim. i. 4; vi. 20; 2 Tim. iii. 6-8). 
Knowledge, not faith, saves; Christ frees entangled but di- 
vine Wisdom in the soul. Salvation is open only to the 
wise or spiritual, the elect. This doctrine, essentially Or- 
phic, is built upon the hypostasis of attributes (Wisdom, 
etc.). Docetism (see above), taught by Simon Magus, ex- 
plains Christ's humanity as unreal. 

Gnostic elements entered into Ebionitism and its fantastic 
spiritism ^ affected the Alexandrian Christians ; but it led 
to the result that Christianity, which to Gnosticism was a 
theosophic myth, was obliged to define itself, examine its 

1 Evil is due to an antagonistic spirit or is inherent in matter or is 
"absence of light," according to different Gnostic views. In the 
O.T. and early Greek philosophy, God is not " light " ; this is a 
Gnostic idea. Gnosticism is older than the second century, when 
it first developed powerful schools, such as those of Basilides and 
Valentinus, c. 130-160. 

2 Not to be overlooked is the admixture of magical elements in 
the interpretation of Christianity, the notion that Christ came to 
save the world from the devil, who wished to prevent the sun 
from rising, etc. These vulgar and ignorant views prevailed among 
the common people from the fourth to the sixth century. They 
derive, however, from the old mystery-element, the struggle against 
the powers of darkness, which Christianity had absorbed. 



564 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

own documents, and ethically to insist on moral rules disre- 
garded by the Gnostics, who " calmed the spirit for philoso- 
phy " by repression or by indulgence (Nicolaitan view, like 
that of the Hindu Tantrists). Owing to Gnostic misuse of 
the texts, the Church had to determine its canon. Thus 
Irenaeus already cites the four gospels as fundamental, 
"like the four winds or four quarters" (c. 186). Tatian 
(pupil of Justin), who held Encratite views (condemning 
wine, flesh, and marriage), about 160 made a combination 
gospel, Diatessaron, used for three centuries in Syria. This 
process of definition and exclusion, however, led again to 
greater strictness of doctrine, which in turn added greater 
authority to the Church, giving it power to decide orthodox 
doctrine, as against any individual interpretation. 

Origen at Alexandria (200-250) tried to reconcile science 
and religion. Like his predecessors Justin and Clement 
(c. 200), Origen held that God was always educating man. 
Whatever is most perfect in humanity is divine. Christ is 
the culmination of a progressive manifestation; in him the 
divine Fatherhood is freely realized. " Whatever has been 
rightly said among all men belongs to us Christians ; all wise 
men previously have dimly seen the truth through the 
Logos-seed implanted in them" (Justin). Clement taught 
the immanence of God ; men are akin to God.^ He also was 
the first clearly to assert the doctrine of free-will. Love of 
God to him is apprehension of the good, a knowledge higher 
than faith. His follower, Origen (Egyptian by birth and 
name), unfortunately combined with Christian theology a 
mass of occult Gnostic teaching: sin is due to obsession by 
evil spirits; the body is inflicted as punishment for sin (man 
has a pre-existent soul); stars are intelligent beings; all 
rational existence will be merged at last in one unity, em- 
bracing Christ and Satan; and (Universalist doctrine) all 

1 Clement of Alexandria, head of its school of religion, succeeded 
Pantaenus, the "missionary to India," who is said to have' fonnd 
there the Aramaean gospel of Matthew. The immanence of God 
is also a Stoic doctrine (see p. 542). Plotinus lived at this time, 
whose spirtual enthusiasm affected Augustine. 



THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 565 

souls will finally be saved. Salvation comes from illumi- 
nation. Christ's blood is a ransom, paid to Satan to free 
souls from the evil power. The blood of martyrs is also a 
redeeming power.^ But Origen's fantastic ideas, like his 
allegorical interpretation of Scripture, are of little account. 
What is important is his liberahty. He based Christianity 
on the history of man, not on dogma. As a scholar, he is 
noteworthy also for having first made a critical edition of 
the Bible. He declared, too, that the son was homoousian 
(of the same nature) with the Father, though he made 
Christ a " second God," a God subordinate to The God. In 
face of a cultured scep.icism, it was the task of Origen to 
prove that the God-man exists as such ; only thus could the 
hesitant world of scholars be brought to the faith. The 
Logos-doctrine thus won a practical as well as a metaphysical 
value. It not only declared that Christ was the Logos but 
.maintained that the Logos was Christ, giving a philosophical 
foundation to Christianity. 

Origen went to Rome but was disheartened by two things : 
first, the vice and venality of Roman Church officials, and 
second, the prevalence of the Noetian heresy, which denied 
the three persons of the trinity save as manifestations of 
one. This led to the Patripassian or Monarchian view, that 
God suffered in Christ's person (below). 

The Bishop of Rome in the middle of the third century 
says that the true creed will not divide the monad, divine 
unity, nor make Christ a creature. But he says also that 
within the Church some believe that Christ is an emanation 
(Sabellian heresy) ; some assume three hypostases not of 
one substance ; and some make Son and Spirit creatures of 
God. Paul of Samosata (Bishop of Antioch, where Arius 
lived), and Sabellius rejected the "three persons." Christ 

1 Justin's soul had welcomed martyrdom but some Alexandrine 
fathers evaded the test when Decius' furious persecution came. If 
the blood of martyrs did not redeem, it strengthened the Church, 
which their death was intended to weaken. Under Nero, Domitian, 
Decius, and Valerian, 250-259, the blood of the martyrs was indeed 
the " seed of the Church." 



566 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

to God is as light to the sun ; Logos and Spirit are, respec- 
tively, illuminating and enlivening powers or modes of God. 
Origen says : " Some affirm that the Saviour is God. 
Though we do not affirm this, yet we ascribe authority to 
him as the Logos, Wisdom, Justice, and Truth of God." 

Thus began the dispute, the settlement of which at last 
formulated the Nicene Symbol (creed). Arius, born 256, 
imbibed at Antioch the view that the Son was subordinate, 
not autotheos, very God, co-eternal with God ; " there was 
when he was not." Christ is a creature, God's agent in cre- 
ating the world.^ Eusebius, Bishop of Nicomedia, sup- 
ported him. Constantine, who after the persecutions of 
Decius, Valerian, and Diocletian (250-303) had granted 
the Church toleration, found it necessary to settle the mat- 
ter by an ecumenical council of some three hundred dele- 
gates of the Church, the first general council. Under im- 
perial pressure Arius was at first condemned, but the con- 
test lasted for fifty years, led by Athanasius, successor of 
Alexander, who had opposed Arius. Eventually both par- 
ties appealed to Rome, where Athanasius was recognized as 
orthodox; but the Bishop of Rome in 350-355 lost his po- 
sition because of imperial disfavour, and Athanasius was 
condemned by the Milan Council. Yet Basil the Great, 
Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus still supported 
him and, with this backing, it was at last decided that Christ 
was not of similar nature but of the same nature with God. 
Many maintained that this view was heterodox. Arius was 
about to be reinstated as orthodox when he died (336). 
Trinitarian metaphysical orthodoxy at any rate was estab- 
lished against a respectable body of protestants, and it seems 
to have been due mainly to imperial will that one side suc- 
ceeded in enforcing its belief.^ 

1 He is thus one with Yahweh, as was held by Clement, Irenaeus, 
Tertnllian, and other theologians against the Gnostic view that 
Yahweh was an evil spirit (because creator). 

2 A belief in the trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) was held 
by all Christians; but just how the members of it were related to 
each other was first decided at Nicaea in 325. 



THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 567 

The Antioch school held in general that God dwells apart 
from his world and that the Son is a creature; the Alex- 
andrian, that God is immanent in his world and that the 
Son is not a creature. Under Theodosius in 381 the first 
Constantinople Council reaffirmed the Nicene Symbol. But 
Arianism survived long among the Goths, Burgundians, 
and Lombards. It is not identical with Socinianism (Faus- 
tus Socinus, 1 539-1604) ; for Socinus explained Christ as 
mere man, while Arius made him neither man nor God. 
Modern followers of Arius were Milton, Newton, and 
Locke, and the early American Unitarians, like Channing 
(who believed in a pre-existent Christ), while English Uni- 
tarians of the eighteenth century were rather Socinian. At 
present. Unitarians, like Athanasius, emphasize Christ's hu- 
manity, though, to quote Chadwick, they make the propo- 
sition general and say that all men are both divine and 
human. 

At this point must be mentioned a matter historically more 
important than metaphysics. At the Council of Aries (314) 
were present English Bishops of London, York, and perhaps 
Lincoln. Patrick was born about 389. Pelagius (who may 
have been English or Irish) disputed with Augustine, c. 
400, at Rome. These are indications how far missionary 
effort had already been extended. 

Minor disputes soon arose in the Church. Nestorius of 
Antioch created intense excitement by denying that Mary 
was mother of God, maintaining that two natures and two 
persons were connected in Christ. After years of painful 
mutual anathemas between Antiochan and Alexandrian 
theologians, the Council at Chalcedon (451) decided once 
for all that Christ has one person and two natures, not two 
persons and two natures, and not, as Eutyches had said, 
one person and one nature, monphysite heresy.^ Mean- 

1 Adherents of Eutyches formed the schismatic Coptic, Abyssin- 
ian, and Armenian churches. That Christ had two wills (as hav- 
ing two natures) was declared to be orthodox doctrine in 680 at 
the third Council of Constantinople. 



568 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

time Nestorius, condemned at Ephesus in 431, founded his 
Chaldee (Nestorian) Church of Eastern Protestants, which 
sent missionaries to the far East, permitted clergy to marry, 
and condemned the use of images and pictures, later ex- 
pressly sanctioned by the orthodox Eastern Church at the 
second Nicean, seventh general. Council, in 787. 

The Eastern Church, however, had one more problem to 
settle, ere it sank into that repose from which it has never 
since emerged. The Nicean Council had strangely neglected 
to formulate the status of the Holy Spirit, which an earlier 
time had on occasion confused with the Logos and even 
interpreted as the Mother Spirit. Thus Bardesanes (died 
223) called the Spirit the '* secret Mother." Some believed 
the Spirit to be consubstantial with the Father; some (Semi- 
Arians) denied the Spirit's divinity. Bishop Macedonius 
(a sect was named for him) taught that the Spirit is a crea- 
ture and servant of God, while the Son is divine and one 
with the Father. But, under Gregory of Nazianzus, a 
formal definition of the Spirit was made, as " life-giv- 
ing Lord, proceeding from the Father, and to be wor- 
shipped and glorified with the Father and the Son." 
Epiphanius and Augustine, representative of the West, on 
the other hand, derived the Spirit " from the Father and 
from the Son," Mioqiie. In 589, at Toledo, this Filioque 
was added to the confession, and the refusal of the Eastern 
Church to adopt it sundered the Churches. The separation 
did not take place formally till after the time of John of 
Damascus (750), but he was the last Easterner to be heard 
with respect in the West. 

After the Second Nicean Council (the seventh ecumeni- 
cal council) in 787, the Greek Church (officially the Holy 
Eastern Orthodox Catholic Apostolic Church) went its own 
way. Intellectually it did not go far, though geographically 
it extended itself over Bulgaria in the ninth and Russia in 
the tenth centuries. But the new problems of the West did 
not affect it ; it had no reforms, only schisms on metaphysi- 
cal grounds (above). It attached itself to symbols and 



THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 569 

mysteries, shows and ceremonies, and divided itself into 
bodies under different jurisdictions ruled by Patriarchs and 
local synods.^ 

The chief difference between the Eastern and Western 
Churches, besides the theological dispute, is that the East 
cared little for the question of redemption. It conceived it 
as a means of freeing the soul from death, not from sin, and 
never advanced beyond apostolic thought. As compared 
with the subjective practical religion of Rome, it is meta- 
physical and very ritualistic. Sculpture and organs it ta- 
boos, but pictures it adores (literally). It has threefold 
immersion, infant communion, anoints with oil (but not for 
extreme unction), has communion sub utraque (in both 
kinds) and leavened bread, exalts the cross and forbids the 
crucifix.^ The non-clerical character of the monastic or- 
ders is that of the early Western Church. Prayer is made 
standing in an eastern direction, as in the apostolic Church. 
Absolution is given with the words (used also by the Wal- 
denses) "may God forgive thee." The Eastern Church has 
its own Bible and the Catechism of Philaret (1839) is the 
chief manual of belief. On the whole, this Church has re- 
mained Hellenic in spirit, a divine mystery-religion, pre- 
occupied with the occult, delighted with spectacles, super- 
stitious, not inimical to the flesh, sensuously serene, not 
spiritually stirred.^ An attempt was made in the fifteenth 
century to effect a reunion with the Western Church. This 
was accomplished in form only and the new union soon dis- 
solved under political pressure. 

1 Some of the national schismatic churches have as rivals United 
Churches, Greek, Nestorian, Armenian, Syrian, Coptic, Abyssinian, 
which are partly Roman, accepting the Filioque and submitting to 
the Roman pope, though they retain clerogamy (except for monks 
and bishops) and communion in both kinds. They are modern 
(fifteenth and sixteenth centuries). Of the National Syrian Jacob- 
ites (of 451) and Marionites (of 680), the latter have become sub- 
ject to the Roman pope (in the East papa or pope is a general 
priestly title). 

2 The cross appeared as a symbol in the Western Church (Cata- 
combs) in the third century, the crucifix not till the seventh. 

3 Yet it has developed pietistic sects like the Doukhabors. It also 



570 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

The Roman Church had gradually built up its power at 
Rome itself. As early as 190, Pope Victor, who, like Tertul- 
lian, used Latin, high-handedly excommunicated the whole 
Eastern Church because it would not celebrate Easter on 
the Sunday after the Paschal full moon, though Eastern 
delegates urged that they followed the Apostle John in 
celebrating it on 14th Nisan (Passover). But Rome, fol- 
lowing authority in faith, followed the Roman way in forms. 
It made the ceremonial of old Rome its own, adapting its 
religious processions, its feast-days, etc., or did as it chose. 
Because more convenient than the apostolic custom, it made 
Easter come on Sunday ; because inconvenient, in another 
sense, it did away with the apostolic Love-feast. It ruled 
as it would. The coercive policy became its settled method 
from the third century when it became Latin. It conceived 
of itself Jewishly as a community ruled by God's delegates 
through law, whereas the Eastern Church conceived of it- 
self not as a body receiving doctrines and sacraments but 
as the soul of the world, consisting of members that were 
individual elect souls. 

Its spirit was saved not from within but from without. 
Africa gave it the fiery Tertullian (above) and the same 
land gave it Augustine. But Africa gave it also Cyprian 
of Carthage (d. 258), who laid the ecclesiastical framework 
of the Church by developing the prestige of the bishop, as 
representative of God, having the authority of Christ, who 
as a priest offered himself in sacrifice. That sacrifice the 
bishop repeats when he celebrates the sacrament of the 
eucharist. Rome accepted this doctrine gladly, as she had 
accepted the teaching of Tertullian (though otherwise she 
rated him a heretic), that all culture before Christ was 
sinful ; ^ that the Church had received faith as its property 

conceals survivals of old Cybele-worship among the more illiterate 
masses. 

1 In the East, Marcion (above) also held that even Judaism was 
not the work of a good God. In general, however, the East took a 
more liberal view and regarded all previous religions as preparatory 
to Christianity and thus containing elements of truth. 



THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 5/1 

(as Irenaeus said, " a deposit ") ; that heresy was only self- 
will. 

Augustine (354-430), the constructive mind of the West- 
ern Church, established the Roman Church on a firm founda- 
tion. In regard to the Arian question, he accepted, as did 
the whole later Church, Roman and Protestant, the Nicean 
theology and the Chalcedonian Christolog}^ Yet, like the 
Rome of old, he was not much interested in abstractions; 
his work lay in practical theology, in the relation between 
God and man rather than the relation between God and 
Christ. But in one utterance he presents an interesting 
parallel to the greatest of India's early theologians who 
(c. 600 B. c.) said that Brahma could be defined only by 
No, No (by negations). *' If asked to define the trinity," 
says Augustine, " we can say only that it is Not this and 
Not that!' John of Damascus echoes this : *' All that we 
can know of the divine nature is that it is not to be known " 
(this appears to revert to Plotinus). 

Following Arnobius (c. 290), who degraded man to exalt 
God, and taught that only some souls are saved (because 
immortal), Augustine explained his doctrine of original sin, 
grace, and predestination. He was at first, in Africa, a 
disciple of the Manichaeans, whose principles were later 
taken up by the Albigenses or Cathari in the twelfth cen- 
tury. He was influenced first by Neo-Platonism and then 
by Bishop Ambrose (who became bishop without having 
been a priest) of Milan, where Augustine became Professor 
of Rhetoric. His chief works were directed against the 
Manichaeans ; against Pelagius, who proclaimed salvation 
by faith and declared that all men are born sinless ; and 
against Donatus, founder of a sectarian African church 
(which lasted for two centuries), who demanded that the 
Church separate itself from the world, and taught that a 
Christian must have a personal experience of religion and 
need not belong to the Roman Church. Donatus was se- 
vere on apostates weakened by persecution ; in his views he 
was supported to some extent by Novatian at Rome. 



572 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Although Augustine knew little Greek and no Hebrew,"^ 
yet his eloquence and constructive imagination established 
the dogmatic leadership of the Roman Church. His famous 
treatise, The City of God (De Civitate Dei), was written 
in 426. His sister founded the order of Augustinian nuns, 
but the monks of his name, to whose order Luther belonged, 
were a later mediaeval body. His theory of predestination 
is the product of a legal Roman mind, and it is significant 
that it made no impression on the Church till it was revived 
and systematized by Anselm and Calvin, both of whom 
were bred to legal study. His attitude is genuinely old 
Roman, a business or legal attitude, concerned with ad- 
justing relations in a case where there is a guilty party and 
a plaintiff. In the course of his De Civitate Dei, Augustine 
shows that human empires wane (the Goths captured Rome 
in 410), but God's empire grows as the other fails; this 
divine empire is the (Roman) Church. This attitude be- 
came that of the Church itself when, in 380, an edict of 
Theodosius made Roman faith the test of orthodoxy, and 
when, in 445, Emperor Valerian recognized the Roman Pope 
as head of the Church.^ 

There was no early consensus as to redemption and 
grace. The Gnostics held that man is sinful by nature, as 
is all creation, but the early Fathers said that man was a free 
moral agent, till Pelagius '* was permitted to speak falsely 
that the Fathers might learn to speak rightly." Justin, 
Clement, and Origen were content to say that God helps 
him whose soul inclines to will aright (will is here a func- 
tion of the soul). Original sin is not really sin, but an in- 
herited disease, which inclines to the wrong: '* Sinless at 

1 He used the Latin texts of which there were several before 
Jerome, whose (Vulgate) version (384-400) supplanted all others. 
Cyprian (c. 250) already cites Latin texts of the Bible. 

2 Chrysostom, who was banished from his office at Constantinople 
by the Chalcedon Council in 403 and died in 407, recognized the 
Bishop of Rome as Peter's successor " in primacy of honour but 
not supremacy of jurisdiction." This reflects the general Eastern 
view of Rome. Chrysostom, like Nestorius, promoted missions but 
opposed " Mariolatry," though he favoured the veneration of saints. 



THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 573 

birth, we sin from choice." Thus too the Antioch school: 
" None sins through another's sin." ^ So Chrysostom : 
'' When man chooses well, God co-operates." The soul, 
created in each instance, is not propagated; its action is 
its own; its connexion with Adam is not immediate but 
through the flesh, mediate; hence infants are born guilt- 
less. 

But here a word as to the soul's pre-existence is needed. 
That the intellectual preceded the material, that souls came 
before bodies, was the view of the Essenes, of Origen, and 
of all those who regarded a body as a punishment for sin : all 
souls were created once for all in the beginning. This was 
derided by Jerome and Augustine, and was a view obsolete 
by the end of the fourth century. The opposed theory, that 
each soul is created at birth (see Zech. xii. i), prevailed 
in the East and had adherents in the West. " God," says 
Jerome, " fabricates souls daily." Every man's body is de- 
rived from Adam ; his soul comes straight from God. But 
against this theory, Tertullian advanced still another, and it 
is this which in the West soon became the working hypothe- 
sis of its anthropology, viz., body and soul are both propa- 
gated. God has done nothing since he rested on the sev- 
enth day. The soul of Adam was created holy ; but in Adam 
it sinned and today man inherits that sinful soul, as he does 
that mortal body, which Adam transmitted. In 461, Leo the 
Great declared that '* every man is formed soul and body m 
the womb, and this is the Catholic belief." In a letter to 
Jerome, Augustine says he does not know certainly about 
this matter (his De Anima is against creationism) ; but his 
theory of predestination seems to imply that he holds the 
soul as descended from Adam and tainted by his sin. The 
later Church reverted to creationism, as less materializmg ; 
but Luther revived the Tertullian " traducianism," as best 

^ Compare the Karma doctrine, which insists on the same point. 
A further interesting parallel is that between the Buddhist "thirst" 
or desire as originating evil and the Christian source in iin6vfila^ 
desire ("concupiscence"). There is of course no historical con- 
nection. 



574 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

explaining original sin. Calvin, however, remained a cre- 
ationist/ 

That the soul is born sinful, is the view of Cyprian, 
Ambrose, and Hilary (third and fourth centuries). Augus- 
tine, whose own spiritual struggles had shown him that the 
will itself is perverse and is determined by the state of the 
soul (''immanent determinism"), gradually gave up the 
view that God co-operates (synergism) and decided that 
the Holy Spirit must do all, even renovate the will (mon- 
ergism) ; hence faith is a gift of God and, since faith is 
necessary to salvation, only they whom God elects are 
saved. Original sin must first of all be erased by baptism ; 
the unbaptized, even infants, are damned; all pagans are 
damned; what is not of faith is sin; ergo, even old Roman 
virtues are really all sins (De Civitate Dei). 

Pelagius, an " indeterminist," taught, on the other hand, 
that sin is due to temptation and example, not to inheritance. 
Grace remits sin; regeneration comes from illumination of 
the intellect by truth. What is called Semi-Pelagianism 
holds that evil but not guilt is inherited; it upholds a com- 
bination of free-will and grace. This Semi-Pelagianism, 
after being sanctioned by the Councils of Aries and Lyons 
in 475, was adopted by the Council of Trent in 1545 (with 
synergism) ; while Pelagianism was cast out as a heresy, 
in 416 and 418, and even roused the East, which promptly 
condemned it also, at Ephesus, in 431. Some Eastern, 
bishops, however, sided with Pelagius ; some said his view 
was " not essential." Luther was a stronger determinist 
than Calvin. The argument as to inherited guilt or in- 
herited evil was revived by the controversy between Cal- 
vinists and the Semi-Pelagian Arminians (the followers of 
one Hermann). The Semi-Pelagian theory of inherited 
evil has modified the Calvinism of the English Church. 

Augustine's unrelenting logic took up also the relation 
between God's justice and mercy, which later troubled the 

1 In America, traducianism was taught by Jonathan Edwards and 
Samuel Hopkins. 



THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 575 

Mohammedans. To a Christian the problem expresses it- 
self thus: How are infinite mercy and infinite justice cor- 
related, and how is justice satisfied by Christ's sujffering? 
As already remarked, expiation did not trouble the Jewish 
Christians; to them, repentance and righteousness made 
atonement. Other early believers (or unbelievers) as- 
sumed, with Marcion, that divine suffering was apparent 
only and hence was not expiatory; or, with Basilides, that 
Christ's suffering was human only and hence finite, and 
therefore not vicarious. Ignatius and Polycarp, reputed 
pupils of John, merely repeat Scripture (Christ died for 
our sins) ; Barnabas and Clement, reputed pupils of Paul, 
say that " the [Christ's] soul is given for man's soul." 
That is, a ransom is paid; but from what? Irenaeus says 
bluntly, " from the devil." Origen goes a step further and 
says the ransom is paid to the devil. Gregory of Nazianzus 
knows of this theory (390), but he questions its correct- 
ness; Christ suffers, not to pay Satan but to satisfy God."^ 

But Augustine has no hesitation in saying : " It would 
have been unjust if Satan had not had the right to rule over 
his captive (man)." On the other hand, both Gregory the 
Great and John of Damascus say that atonement is paid to 
God and not to the devil. Here the subject was dropped, 
for the Church trusted rather to justification through works, 
till the almost Protestant " Bishop of Canterbury," Anselm, 
in his Cur Deus Homo (1035-1109) reasoned the matter 
out on the basis of Roman law : God has been robbed and 
must be reimbursed. Satan's claim is denied. God's jus- 
tice must be satisfied. It is God's compassion for man that 
leads to the sacrifice, through which alone justice can be 
satisfied. 

But the Church preferred the theory of Abelard and 
Lombard (1164) : Christ's suffering conjoined with baptism 

1 This Gregory recognizes purification by fire, which under Greg- 
ory the Great (c. 600) assumes the form of Purgatory, with deliv- 
erance therefrom through intercessory prayers and masses. The 
early church of Rome has no purgatory; the believer expects to 
go immediately to God. 



57^ THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

and penance gives remission of sin. Thomas Aquinas 
(1270), agreeing with Bonaventura, though the latter was 
not uninfluenced by Anselm, says that if God sees fit to 
remit sin, it is not " unjust " for him to do so ; God is above 
legal satisfaction. The Christian soul, member of the 
Church, which is one with Christ, can partly redeem itself 
(through works of supererogation), as Christ himself not 
only satisfies justice but adds merit to the redeemed. This 
view has remained that of the Roman Church; baptism, 
character, good works, conformity to law are items tending 
to remission of sins (so the Council of Trent, 1545-1563).^ 
This discussion has anticipated the progress of the Church 
along other lines. In the first Christian era, Chiliasm, the 
expectation of Christ's near advent to reign a thousand 
years before the last day, had led many devout souls to 
become ascetic. Ready for Christ, they renounced the 
world and, sometimes, imitating earlier pagan associations, 
collected in coenobite colonies. By the fourth century most 
of the Fathers had renounced all hope of Christ's speedy 
advent (Eusebius calls it a fable) ; ^ but the monastic prac- 
tice had already been regulated by Basil the Great (d. 379), 
who laid the foundation of Eastern monachism in Cappa- 
docia. Athanasius, it is said, brought the idea to the West. 
By the fifth century, there were monasteries in Italy, Africa, 
and Gaul. The first well regulated order was that of the 
Benedictines (529), whose regulations were adopted by 
others. Personal salvation was the aim of these passive 
saints, who were lay brothers, till Gregory the Great con- 
verted them into active priestly missionaries. Cassiodorus 
at Vivarium at the same time (i. e. 600) made their home 
a seminary of learning. But, till 910, they were not under 

1 Protestants think that this "confuses sanctification with justifi- 
cation." See Luther's view, below. Some early Christians C second 
century) held that the eucharist was mystically "the medicine of 
immortality." 

2 It was revived in the year 1000 and later by the Anabaptists ; 
also by the Millerites and other distraught sects crying : " the day is 
at hand ; prepare to meet thy God." 



THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 577 

papal jurisdiction, and being uncontrolled they became more 
or less corrupt. Yet they were by no means idle or vicious 
bodies. The Cluny reform then incorporated monastic opn 
position to simony, to clerical marriage, and to papal elec- 
tion by party politics (the Cluny movement forced the elec- 
tion by cardinals). A century before, monks had brought 
Christianity to Germany. The reform movement also ex- 
pressed itself in new orders. Bernhard's Cistertians were 
such a reformed Benedictine order (eleventh century). 
The armies of the Church, the Knights Templar, etc., were 
formed at this time. From the last quarter of the ninth to 
the second half of the eleventh century, the Church was con- 
trolled by the corrupt aristocracy of Rome; but when it 
shook itself free, there sprang up the reformatory orders of 
mendicant friars, the Franciscans (1209), and Dominicans 
(1215). They followed the life of Jesus as imitated by that 
mystical saint, Francis of Assisi (d. 1226), who bore on his 
body the stigmata of Christ and in his heart the desire to be 
like his Lord. This desire was expressed by vows of hu- 
mility, poverty, love, devotion, and obedience. These friars 
in their first estate were the great missionaries of their time 
and their reformation lasted till what is known as the Refor- 
mation was well-nigh at hand. 

But, between them and the Protestant era, came the four- 
teenth century, when the Church was rent to its foundation, 
for the papal throne was claimed by two Popes whose mutual 
anathemas shocked the world. Then spirituality seemed to 
have left the Church. Boccaccio and Dante show that the 
ecclesiastic, bishop, priest, monk, or friar, was often synony- 
mous with crime, meanness, and lust. Yet, before entering 
upon this topic, to trace the Church orders a little further, 
the Reformation itself produced one of the most important, 
that of Ignatius Loyola (1534), whose Society of Jesus 
dedicated itself to the service of the Church absolutely, 
and whose missionaries with wonderful devotion laid the 
principles of Christianity before the new and savage world 
of America, as well as before the ancient civilization of the 



578 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

East.^ Another result of the Reformation was the forma- 
tion, within the Church, of the Augustinian party called 
Jansenists. Jansen (i 585-1638) contended against the 
Jesuits at Louvain. His sect was expelled from France by 
Louis XV; but it still forms a schismatic Netherland 
Church. Jansen's Augttstimts, which was published in 1640, 
denies free will. 

During the period just reviewed the Church was intel- 
lectually alert. Its formal philosophy, though hampered 
by orthodox requirements, was subtle. But the most im- 
portant movement in it passed without appreciation of its 
significance. This was when, after Anselm had enunciated 
his credo lit intelligam (dogmatic truth must be made intel- 
ligible), Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican, and Duns Scotus, a 
Franciscan, founded two schools, in which understanding 
and will were respectively made the highest principle. 
Therewith the former union of faith and knowledge was 
broken. At the same time the identity of thought and being 
was investigated. The Nominalists, of the eleventh century, 
denied reality to concepts ; while Anselm and other Realists 
held to the old Universalia ante rem} The goal was then 
sought through pantheism and mysticism. Scotus Erigena, 
in the ninth, and Eckhardt and Bernhard, in the twelfth 

1 That Jesuitical and Jesuit have become Protestant terms of 
reproach is due to three reasons. Devotion to the Church involves 
obedience to it expressed by complete service, including sacrifice, of 
one's own personality; higher truth must be served even by evasion 
or untruth. To this ethics, corporate good is supreme. Second, 
liberal politics in England opposed the Stuarts supported by the 
Jesuits, who thus became odious to the Commonwealth party. 
Third, Jesuits are often supposed to have invented the horrors of 
the Inquisition, which was really invented in 1232 to enforce the 
prohibition, of three years before, against the laity reading the 
Bible. Again, an Alva was merely a political agent. To balance 
Jesuit errors (many of them those of their day), the historian in 
his general estimate should weigh the life of the Jesuit Fathers 
among our Redskins, for example; their heroic courage, their fre- 
quent martyrdom ; and, from a human point of view, the unrivalled 
work they have done for the history of religions. 

2 Abelard, who vv^as condemned by the Church as a rationalist in 
1 121 and 1 140, held a middle view, Universalia in re. His answer 



THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 579 

century, had been respectively precursors of these two 
doctrines, which were revived by the pantheist Giordano 
Bruno and the mystic Jacob Boehme (sixteenth century). 

Herewith closes the period of Church-philosophy. In the 
seventeenth century, Descartes assumed as the foundation 
of his philosophy not orthodoxy but doubt, and Spinoza's 
affirmation of the reality of a knowledge of things was 
based on the veracity of God as known through man's in- 
nate idea of the perfect. Thereafter, philosophy might, or 
might not, support the Church. It was no longer the 
nursling of religion. 

Both Bernhard, who held that faith, though an intuition 
of truth, is based on authority, as science is based on rea- 
son, and Anselm, who invented the topic called Evidences,^ 
were influential in furthering that veneration for the Mother 
of God which is often called Mariolatry. Nestorius, in 431, 
was condemned for his attitude toward this revered Mother, 
the only mortal born sinless and going direct to God, as the 
Fathers taught. Intense excitement was aroused in the 
Eastern Church by Nestorius' repudiation of Mariolatry. 
The priests who had defended the " Mother of God " in the 
controversy were escorted home by a tumultuous mob of 
enthusiasts. Devotion to her in the West was of later 
growth, but in the thirteenth century they that neglected 
her were fined and in 1854 Pius IX promulgated the doc- 
trine that Mary was immaculately conceived. But her wor- 

to credo ut intelligam was Non credendum nisi pritts intellectum. 
Occam, who opposed papal control of the State in the fourteenth 
century, revived Nominalism, but after him the identity of thought 
and being was no longer urged in its scholastic form. 

iJhe Fathers' evidence (of God's existence) was either based on 
teleology or on the subjective effect of his presence; divinity in 
Augustine's phrase, "impinges on the soul"; God is known by being 
experienced; we know he exists because we love him. Formal 
ontology appears first in Anselm's argument (1033-1109) : The 
mind possesses the idea of God as a perfect being ; hence such a 
being exists. For a being who may not exist is not most perfect 
and a necessarily existent being cannot be conceived as not existent ; 
hence the mind conceiving of a perfect being must conceive of a 
real being. 



58o THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

ship is not permitted, only *' hyperdoulia," or great vener- 
ation, higher than the douHa paid to a saint, to whom also 
one does not pray, but cries ora pro nobis, pray for us. 
Early veneration is shown by the remains in the catacombs. 
There Mary with the child in her lap appears as early as the 
first and second centuries. The accepted type of the Mother 
of God may have been of Egyptian origin (Isis). 

The first case of '' intercession of saints " is found c. 200 
in the Gnostic Acts of Paul and Thecla, cited by Tertullian.^ 
Formal canonization was at first a sensible safeguard against 
a multiplicity of doubtful saints. As it was, the Church 
inadvertently canonized Buddha (St. Josaphat). A few 
popes have been canonized, among them Pius V, who ex- 
communicated Queen Elizabeth. But most of the Roman 
saints are worthy Christians, apostles, the early Fathers 
(except those incapacitated by heresy or other blemishes, 
like Tertullian and Origen) and later worthies credited with 
piety and miracles, either in person or through relics. They 
have a vision of God and intercourse with God, according to 
Origen and Justin ; they wear aureoles,, says Aquinas, in- 
stead of common gold crowns.^ The nimbus occurs first in 
the third century pictures of Christ; by the fifth century it 
adorns any saint. It may have come, in the first instance, 
from the head-shield of Greek statues. 

The veneration of images, prohibited in the Eastern 
Church, has been practised since the fifth century and prob- 
ably before that. Many old divinities of Greece have be- 
come, as images, converted into Christian objects of venera- 
tion. Gregory the Great censured the Bishop of Marseilles 
for having defaced the images in his diocese (c. 600), which 
shows that official opinion was not uniform. In 1563, the 
Church declared that images were only mnemonic, reminders 

1 Prayers to martyrs occur as early as the fourth century. 
Augustine recognizes prayers for the dead. It is of interest to see 
that in his day it was a novelty to sing psalms in church. 

2 Aquinas' Summa Theologica systematized theological science in 
the thirteenth century (Lombard had attempted this in the twelfth). 
Aquinas' work was endorsed by the Pope in 1879. 



THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 58 1 

of piety. Reformed churches now employ them for this 
purpose. 

All Christian creeds agree in making the lives of the good 
eternal in heaven ; but Christians differ as to a probationary 
period and as to eternal damnation. Augustine, who speaks 
of a "secret receptacle" of souls (purgatorial), postulates 
an aionian fate for the damned, as did Calvin (Matt. xxv. 
41). Origen speaks of eternal punishment, yet not as a 
reality, for man can free himself, but as a beneficial decep- 
tion of God (to induce good behaviour). Annihilation of 
sinners was taught by Arnobius. Hell, in mediaeval the- 
ology, lies remote from heaven. Next to hell is purgatory ; 
next to that, the limbus infantum, who die unbaptized ; next 
to that, the limbus patrum, where Christ went to preach to 
those in bondage, the abode of Old Testament saints (also 
called the Bosom of Abraham).^ 

The Roman Church extended the sacramental idea, from 
baptism and the Last Supper, to include confirmation, pen- 
ance, extreme unction, ordination, and marriage. Only for 
the ordained priest does God change the bread and wine 
into the eucharist as a sacrifice. Jesus was himself bap- 
tized but did not baptize. Both the original sacraments 
have been traced by comparative study to magical ideas. 
Baptism, as we have seen, is magic lustration practised by 
many races to expel demons or evil. Baptism " in the 
Name " reverts to the hypostasis of the Name, of one whose 
power is thereby conveyed to the one baptized. It purifies 
from sickness as well as from sin, as does oil, used to keep 
off sickness and other devils in life after death. Even in 
the fifth century, baptism was a medicine for disease. Bap- 
tism to wash away sin and as a symbol of the resurrection 
is, says Tertullian, a Mithra-rite inspired by the devil to 

1 Luther favoured more than did Calvin an intermediate state 
after death and this view was received and extended by Sweden- 
borg. There has been no consensus as to what sort of body would 
rise again. According to Aquinas, it will be like the earthly body, 
but it will "move faster." The whole subject was matter of opin- 
ion not of dogma. 



582 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

mock Christianity. The Name gives the power of the di- 
vinity invoked. Lustrating water and Name together are 
irresistible against devil and evil. 

So of the Supper, Justin tells us that bread and a cup of 
water (the early Christians used either water or wine; 
Paul speaks of the cup only) made part of the Mithra 
ritual, which bread signifies immortality. There is, indeed, 
no doubt that the idea back of these rites was mystical. 
The eating of a divine body is an early communion which 
makes the worshipper one with the god. But the Church 
spiritualizes. Augustine says that the eucharist contains a 
spiritual presence. The early congregation described by 
Justin seems to regard it as mnemonic, others as a means of 
obtaining immortality. As early as the eighth century, 
however, the Church of the East regarded the eucharist as 
the real body and blood. This doctrine, called transub- 
stantiation in 121 5 by the Roman Church, was known earlier 
than it was named. In 1050, Berengarius was excommuni- 
cated for denying the real presence. In the sixteenth cen- 
tury, the Jesuits proclaimed the opus operatum; the sacra- 
ments effect in the penitent soul a disposition to grace. 

The Reformers differed as to the eucharist. Luther 
clung to the Church doctrine, as approved in 12 15, but 
modified it to consubstantiation, the real presence is not in 
but with the eucharist. Calvin explained that the bread and 
wine are not mere signs ; Christ is " truly and efficaciously, 
but not physically'* present. Zwingli (d. 1531) and the 
EngHsh reformers, on the other hand, maintained the 
mnemonic or symbolic character of the eucharist. 

That Paul was consciously bent on overcoming the pow- 
ers of evil is probably true, but it may also be true that he 
had at the same time already taken a higher view; to him 
baptism is not a mere means of expelling a demon. As to 
the Supper, Christ himself says, " Do this in memory 
of me." Whatever the original pagan idea (and that is 
unquestioned), it remains doubtful whether even the most 
primitive Christian idea had not already left it behind. All 



THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 583 

historians admit that a religious practice taken into a new 
cult may be without its most primitive significance, as the 
victor's laurel no longer was meant as a guard against 
demons, though that was the laurel's first use. To say that 
the principle of the eucharist, when first employed by Chris- 
tians, was one with that which inspired the maenad to de- 
vour the bull-god, is to ignore relative values, because, ac- 
cording to Christian belief, there is no union without pre- 
vious purification, not physical but spiritual. 

The Church from the fourth century possessed as it were 
a body and a soul. Its body was the huge establishment 
with pope, cardinals, bishops, priests, friars, wealth ac- 
quired by gift and trade (a crown exchanged for the " states 
of the church " in the eighth century) — a swollen body and 
often in an unhealthy condition. Its soul was in that un- 
dying aspiration for a diviner state and a purer life than 
was easily attainable in a body devoted to the world. The 
lowest moral ebb of the Church was when the popes lost 
control of it and became creatures of the Roman nobility, 
in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The Holy Roman 
Empire was founded in 962. Even materially there was not 
much gained by it, for the king who went barefoot to 
Canossa in 1077 afterwards in royal power got to San 
Angelo. In fact, every union of Church and State, papal 
or protestant, has only helped to stifle the soul without 
compensating advantage to the body, since the persistent 
soul has always disturbed the body by doing its best to 
escape. 

Sometimes, however, it strove to cure the body without 
escaping. This was the meaning of that earliest revolt ex- 
pressed in Montanus' revival ; in the retreat of Benedict's 
monks; in the reform or spiritual outpouring in Francis' 
order; in the Council called by Pope Urban II (French by 
birth), to consider moral lapses on the part of the king 
(Philip I of France) ; in the impulse given by the same 
pope toward the first Crusade. For the Crusades, mixed 
as they were with worldly aims (romance, conquest), were 



5^4 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

primarily spiritual enterprises. To approach Christ, to ob- 
tain forgiveness of sins, were the underlying motives of this 
mediaeval revival inspired by Urban and fired by Peter the 
Hermit. Even Francis of Assisi took part in one of the 
later crusades (in 1219). 

The oldest formal Protestants were the Waldenses of 
Lombardy, supposed to derive from Waldo (1173). With- 
out wishing to leave the Church body, they longed to revive 
its primitive piety and to read the Bible. They proclaimed 
their own opinions, holding the intercession of saints as 
naught and purgatory to be only an earthly state. A little 
later, in England, Wicklif (1350-1384) denounced the 
friars, called the Pope Antichrist, demanded independence, 
opposed the doctrine of transubstantiation, and made his own 
translation of the Bible. But, in the fourteenth century, 
the Pope, who owned a papal residence at Avignon, was 
now hand in glove with England's dearest foes, the French. 
Parliament already, in 1366, had refused to pay the papal 
taxes. Thus Wicklif revolted against the political as much 
as against the worldly attitude of the Church. But, directly 
influenced by him, Huss (i 369-141 5) began another crusade 
against vice, venality, falsehood, and other diseases of the 
Church body, exposed doctrinal errors, and left his follow- 
ers in Hungary, the Unitas Fratrum or Moravians (as 
Wicklif had left the Lollards) to uphold his reform, de- 
claring Christ to be the model and accepting only the au- 
thority of the Bible, till the new Reformation took up as 
its own these old contentions. Another primitive com- 
munity was that of the Mennonites (whence came those 
who baptized only adults, mistakenly called re-baptizers, 
Anabaptists), who opposed infant baptism, would not take 
oaths or bear arms, and according to their lights endeavoured 
to follow Christ in all things. Savonarola (b. 1452), who 
opposed the pope, but still within the Church, and gave 
his life for reform before the fifteenth century, in his plea 
for the Bible and purity struck the very key-note of the 
soon following Reformation. 



THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 585 

But the body was not responsive to the demands of the 
soul. Hence, stirred by the abuse of indulgences, whereby 
the Church had prostituted itself and sold its most valuable 
possession for worldly gain, Martin Luther (1483-1546) ' 
posted at last his ninety-five theses, at Wittenberg in 15 17, 
and came out openly against papal abuses, in restricting the 
communion cup, in celebrating mass as a priestly sacrifice, 
in confession and absolution, in monastic vows (as contrary 
to nature), and in ** meritorious acts," as impugning the 
complete validity of redemption without such acts. 

In theology, the Protestant Augsburg confession was Ni- 
cean ; in Christology, it was Chalcedonian ; in anthropology, 
it was Augustinean. Luther's strictures on the papal view 
of sin and grace also were not his own but followed those 
of Erasmus, who, as early as 15 15, had called, too, for a 
return to the authority of the Bible. As has been seen, 
Luther himself, an Augustinian monk, still clung to the 
view of the Church in regard to the eucharist, which he 
hardly modified by the substitution of one proposition for 
another. In sum, Luther's greatness did not consist in his 
originality but in his boldness, his moral courage. Born of 
peasants, himself rude, coarse, and fearless, he was needed 
as ethical regenerator. Erasmus was too finnicky a scholar 
for the purpose. Luther shook the religious world into a 
realization of its needs. Alexander VI had shown what a 
pope might be ; Luther sought to show what a Christian 
ought to be. In doing this, he worked hampered by many 
limitations, personal and of the time. Nor was spirituality 
his characteristic. He dismissed the gentle Melanchthon 
(who was also so much of his time as to approve of burning 
Servetus at the stake) in 1537 with the benediction, ** May 
God fill you with hatred of the pope." This Teutonic touch 
expresses, however, more than the animus of Luther. 
Christian charity characterized none of the Reformers. 
Against Zwingli, Luther was as incensed as against the 
pope, because the two reformers differed as to the eucharist, 
and because Luther believed in monergism and Melanchthon 



586 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

in synergism, Luther felt that his friend was not really a 
true Christian. 

But the great drawback to Luther's work was, that in 
shaking the religious world he shook it to pieces. What 
had been for centuries in the West one Church, now became 
a mass of fragments ; or to speak in Biblical language, the 
one flock became a number of flocks, each penned in a 
separate fold, and each unhappily regarding the occupants 
of the other folds not as fellow-sheep of one shepherd, but 
as wolves disguised and herded by Satan. 

A revivalist tendency had been active in Germany before 
Luther's day. Attempts to limit papal power were made as 
early as 1409. Religion based on personal relation with 
God was not a new idea. Political and social reform began 
in fact with the Renascence.^ What then did Luther ac- 
complish? First, he reinstated, not in theory but in fact, 
Biblical authority; then he freed the soul of Christianity 
from hierarchical, mediatorial, monastic control, and re-es- 
tablished as sacraments those of the primitive Church. For 
Church belief and Church control he substituted the simple 
message that the free grace of God in Christ is what makes 
guilty men blessed; a confident belief in God's grace suf- 
fices. What he disastrously ignored was, that religious 
fervour may legitimately express itself in emotion, in ritual, 
in the solemn ceremony ; that the beauty of holiness is not 
necessarily embodied in ugliness of worship. He abolished 
fasting, though Christ fasted; he abolished deacons and 
bishops, though they belong to pre-papal Christianity; he 
rejected Roman control, only to substitute State-control; he 
rejected ''merit" and "good works," only to find that the 
emphasis on " faith " resulted at once in defining faith in 

1 It is a mistake to suppose that papal authority was almost un- 
restricted before the Reformation. In England, before Protestant- 
ism had been thought of, Henry VII and Wolsey under Henry VIII 
had confiscated papal wealth and privileges. There was a universal 
tendency to circumscribe Church power. Lorenzo de' Medici per- 
mitted papal authority only " as it seemed good to him," nisi quod 
ei videretur nihil permittens. 



THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 587 

terms of scholastic doctrine (whence interminable quarrels) ; 
while to those indifferent to doctrine the crude statement 
that good works were naught led (the Antinomians) to dis- 
regard of any good work/ 

The theory of relative necessity of atonement became an 
Arminian doctrine in the seventeenth century. Its germ 
may be found in the division between Aquinas and Duns 
Scotus and their followers, the Thomasts and Scotists, on 
the infinite value of Christ's sufferings. Scotus, as a Nomi- 
nalist, held to a nominal satisfaction of justice. 

In regard to justification by faith, as the judicious Hooker 
says, " Holiness cannot be piacular," and the Reformers, 
Luther and Calvin, added to the objective treatment of 
Anselm (above) the element of faith and consciousness of 
redemption, that is, a work of man. But, to guard against 
error, the Reformation insisted that faith is not the procur- 
ing but the instrumental cause of justification. Faith does 
not justify but accepts what justifies. So Luther says: 
" Faith and works are inseparably connected, but faith alone 
without works appropriates atonement and thereby justifies, 
and yet faith does not remain alone " (works spontaneously 
follow). Calvin agrees with this. Both of course reject 
Anselm's quaint mediaeval view that the number of the 
saved exactly equals the number of fallen angels and that 
redemption was really intended to keep up to its full quota 
the number of pure spirits. Later Lutheran formulas 
(1576) stressed the difference between the passive and active 
obedience of Christ; the latter, obedience to the law, is 
" imputed to us for righteousness." Except for the Ar- 
minian view of Grotius, this is still the Protestant position 
in regard to soteriology. Justification is from God in con- 
sequence of faith; free grace, without merit, is granted to 
every believer and is followed by freedom from the law.^ 

■■• So the faith-doctrine in India has led to depreciation of all meri- 
torious works and disregard of ethics. 

2 Grotius (1645) held the view, called acceptilatio, of relative not 
absolute necessity of atonement. Vicarious satisfaction is not in 
this view a quid pro quo but an aliud pro quo; the claim is not 



588 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

Intellectually the most influential Reformer was John 
Calvin (i 509-1 564), whose religion extended over France, 
Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, the Netherlands, England, 
Scotland, and America, and cast a gloom over three cen- 
turies. Lutherism as a Church was more local and suffered 
the fate due to its party origin and scorn of emotion. It 
became a State institution, markedly apathetic. A Lutheran 
congregation in Germany appears to be spiritually dead. 
In the last century, the Roman Church has in fact regained 
much of the religious and political authority from which 
Luther ousted it. Calvinism, a later growth, shook itself 
more completely free from the old Church and landing in 
England, at a time when reform meant freedom, found a 
soil wherein to propagate itself successfully. 

Brought up and educated under legal auspices, son of an 
attorney and pupil of the famous lawyer Alciati, Calvin was 
from boyhood severe and censorious. His mind was 
shrewd, logical, devoid of higher spirituality, but religiously 
inclined ; his body weak, nervous, dyspeptic. Coming as a 
youth to Geneva, he was induced by the Protestant Farel 
to remain there as pastor. Expelled on account of harsh- 
ness, he returned (1541) and thereafter ruled with an iron 
hand. He was not an original thinker. Le Fevre, born 
about 1455, had denied " good works," held salvation as a 
free gift, doubted transubstantiation, and taken the Bible 
as sole authority five years before Luther nailed up his 
theses. Farel was Le Fevre's pupil. Calvin's mind, though 
not creative, was formulative. His Institutes, owing to his 
personal power, was formally voted by the Little Council 
of Geneva to be *' the holy doctrine of God," and at the 
same time (1553) it was commanded that "no one should 
dare to speak against the Institutes." In 1557 he banished 
the Anabaptists under fear of death. At Strassburg he re- 
quired every would-be communicant to be examined first 

satisfied but waived. Atonement is only exemplary, not to atone 
for past sin but to prevent future sin. Socinus rejected vicarious 
atonement altogether. 



THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 589 

by himself in a sort of confessional ; he instituted a " minute 
inquisitorial interference with the lives of the people." Be- 
cause Castellio questioned the inspiration of Solomon's 
Song, Calvin refused him the ministry. Worse than such 
impiety was it to criticize adversely Calvin himself. He 
forced Ameaux to go almost naked through Geneva and beg 
pardon of God for saying that Calvin was a bad man. He 
banished Bolsec because Bolsec said Calvin's theory of pre- 
destination was nonsense, and (1553) caused Servetus to 
be burned at the stake because of disbelief in Calvin's the- 
ology. Yet, it is to be feared, not so much for religion's 
sake as for the sake of his own authority. As one of his 
admirers says: Calvin connived with the Roman Catholic 
Church to slay Servetus not so much because of heresy as 
because *' the condemnation of Servetus ^ now became vital 
to Calvin's whole Geneva status." 

But the theocracy established by Calvin at Geneva was a 
local Protestant autocracy, which his own neighbouring 
Protestant states detested, as they ridiculed him. The 
Council at Bern even declared Calvin to be " a quarrelsome 
meddler in divine counsels" (1557), and said that they 
would burn his Institutes as an heretical and dangerous 
work. Neither Basel, Zurich, nor Bern upheld Calvin 
against Bolsec, who had declared that predestination was 
" absurd." It is urged that Calvin showed " statesmanlike 
breadth of mind " and that he helped the cause of civil lib- 
erty. But it is difficult to find breadth of mind in any of his 
expressed views, while his actions show only an inordinate 

1 Servetus was " a man of genius who anticipated much not only 
of what Socinianism afterwards asserted, but some Christological 
views which now have wide currency" (Walker, John Calvin, p. 
326). He discovered the circulation of the blood three quarters of 
a century before Harvey. Calvin showed at the trial that Servetus 
had said that Palestine was not a land flowing with milk and honey. 
Hence (argued Calvin) Servetus spoke against Moses; therefore 
he spoke against the Holy Spirit who inspired Moses, etc. In his 
De trinitatis erroribus (1531), Servetus had laid the foundation of 
the charges against him. It must be admitted that he was as auda- 
cious and impudent as he was clever. 



590 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

self-conceit. His practical interpretation of civil liberty was 
that the Church as the oracle of God should control the State 
and that John Calvin should control the Church. His stren- 
uous morality and individualistic conception of the nature of 
salvation appealed to his English friends, while his opposition 
to the papacy released the English world from one Church 
without binding it to the pope of Geneva. Thus only can 
it be said that " the spiritual indebtedness of Western Eu- 
rope and of America to the educating influence of Calvin's 
theology is wellnigh measureless" (op. cit. p. 428). In 
France, two years before his death, there was a reaction 
which weakened the Huguenots ; but this was largely politi- 
cal. We are indebted to Calvin, however, if not for his 
gloomy theology, for his severe morality, which was needed 
at the time. His intolerance of unethical behaviour put 
into religion a force it had almost lost and its severity had a 
tonic effect of lasting value. 

Augustine's view that the lost who are not given the grace 
of perseverance are passed by, became with Calvin the 
statement that men are damned simply to please God. In 
opposition to the Semi-Pelagianism of the Church, and to 
the Arminian doctrine of inborn evil (not guilt), Calvin 
insisted that man is naturally evil and guilty and redemption 
is effected through God's favouritism (not through syn- 
ergism). A few selected (elect) receive the undeserved 
grace of redemption. Thus absolute predestination, par- 
ticular redemption, man's total depravity, God's irresistible 
grace, and the perseverance of the saints are the five theses 
urged (at Dort in 1618-1619) against the Arminians. The 
glory of God, not the blessedness or happiness of his crea- 
ture, is the aim of God. This necessitates predestination, 
which again is proved by the implication of provision in 
prevision on the part of every intelligent being. The Ar- 
minians, on the other hand, admit fore-knowledge but gen- 
erally deny fore-ordination. 

The Geneva consensus on predestination occurred in 1551. 
In 1 551-1552 were composed in England the original Forty- 



THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 591 

Two Articles, which, when revised, became the Thirty-Nine 
Articles, sanctioned in 1571. They are largely Calvinistic. 
The (Presbyterian) Westminster Conference (1643-1648) 
embodied the Calvinistic faith for those politically at odds 
with the Crown. But the EngHsh Reformation (1532- 
1536, 1547) belongs not to a history of religion but to a 
history of establishments. It introduced no new ideas. 
Calvinism mercifully tempered with Arminianism explains 
it, except on its political side. The break with Rome was 
due to desire for political, not religious, freedom. Mary 
( 1 553-1 558) established Protestantism firmly by her intem.- 
perate opposition and it was definitively restored by Eliza- 
beth (1558), though soon divided by the re-reformers called 
Puritans, and sub-divided again by Separatists, Quakers 
(George Fox, b. 1624, was a pure mystic), etc., as Luther- 
ism was divided in Germany and Calvinism in Poland. 

Two of these reform movements deserve special notice, 
that of the Pietists in Germany and that of the Methodists 
in England and America. The first was the natural anti- 
thetic result of Luther ism and Calvinism, both of which had 
done what they could to stifle emotional religion. Spener 
(b. 1635) and Francke (b. 1663) started the movement, but 
their *' piety " at first outdid Calvinism in some regards. 
They forbade even children to play and adults were taught 
to scorn all occupation except that of occupying their souls 
with religious feeling; even religious form, such as church- 
going, was looked upon as debasing. Sentimental piety was 
true religion. The Moravian Zinzendorf became infected 
with this doctrine and established in 1722 a monastic com- 
munity of dispersed Moravians devoted to sensuous mysti- 
cism, strict discipline, a new order of bishops, and an elab- 
orate liturgy. This was, of course, a reversion to certain 
" varieties of religious experience " familiar to the Church 
in the Middle Ages. Lutherans, and even the original Pie- 
tists, were revolted by the indecency inseparable from a too 
sensuous *' love for Jesus " and Zinzendorf was banished. 
Later conservatism improved this body, as was the case with 



592 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

the Quakers, who also began as mystics and at first ofiFended 
decency/ and the reformed Pietists adopted the Augsburg 
Confession in 1749. Apart from objectionable features, this 
Moravian body, active in America, has done much good in 
Christianizing savages and in upholding a simple Christian 
life. 

In England, a High Church faction, devoted to ritualism 
and hence called Methodist (1729), became the sect of that 
name through the influence of Wesley and Whitefield 
(1735). It fashioned its government after the EstabHshed 
Church (having bishops), but, influenced in part by pietistic 
feeling, it reverted to an apostolic model in restoring the 
Love-feast and especially in re-inventing the order of itin- 
erant evangelists, who, like mediaeval friars, roamed about, 
preaching the gospel and recalling to life the simple spiritu- 
ality of inner religion. Whitefield's particular followers are 
Calvinistic, otherwise the sect is Arminian ; as a whole, it 
insists on sanctification and the witness of the Spirit. 
Though its initial success was due chiefly to revivalist meth- 
ods, it has held its own through its ability to be emotional 
without being sickly, and dramatic without being insincere. 
It is significant because it was the first sect both to minimize 
theology as compared with religion and to see religion 
broadly, without over-emphasis on non-essentials. 

In England, Legate was burned at the stake (for holding 
the Unitarian heresy) in 161 1, the last victim of that form 
of intolerance. At present, after three hundred years, in- 
tolerance in any form is beginning to disappear. In the late 
past it has expressed itself rather through fission than 
through persecution. In America, for example, the orig- 
inal Calvinistic Baptists felt unequal to the strain of Chris- 
tian unity and a sect was formed of Particular Baptists, 
followed by other sects called Free-will Baptists, Primitive 

1 The charge that the Puritans fled from intolerance only to be- 
come as intolerant themselves, has some basis of truth : but they 
banished the Quakers not because of creed but because of their 
behaviour (appearing naked in church, etc.). 



THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 593 

Baptists, and Seventh Day Baptists. A constant reforming 
of the reformed has thus led to new parties innumerable ^ 
but not to new ideas. At most, one religious item of faith 
or practice has been heavily stressed, thus producing a Bap- 
tist, a Quaker, a Shaker, a Mormon Prophet, an Endeav- 
ourer, a Christian Scientist, or a Salvationist, of whom some 
are sects apart, while others are sectless, drawn from any 
source, but now devotees of one idea. Even within more 
conservative ranks, the practical effect of this predilection 
for dissension has resulted in the anomaly of a village 
scarcely capable of supporting one " meeting-house " yet 
harbouring three or four sects, whose members do not know 
why they differ but resolutely remain apart. 

That they do not know why they differ is, however, a 
distinct advance. Difference or dissent is only their reli- 
gious inheritance ; it does not express their real religious 
attitude, which has passed beyond the subtleties of creeds. 
It is, indeed, sometimes said that sects are a good thing; 
they reflect mental activity; they keep religion alive. Yet 
intellectual vigour expressed by quarrelling about minor 
matters tends to keep alive not religion but dogma. Sects 
have been a good thing. Each has preserved something 
likely to be lost, independence, ethics, good taste, emotion, 
etc. But there is only one question of vital importance be- 
fore the Church today: Is Christianity one or divided, an 
ethical system or a mystical belief, or both? For the sects 
have joined hands and the Church long ago has ceased to 
excite itself over the problems of the remoter past. It is 
returning to that simple apostolic state of mind which had 
nothing to say of predestination, ignored the controversial 
possibilities of monophysitism, and did not even define the 
trinity, but taught a living belief in the brotherhood of man 
under the fatherhood of God. 

Yet, even that age had this same vital problem. Is Chris- 

1 In Pennsylvania alone there are said to be twenty-one sects and 
fifty-two sub-divisions. 



594 THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

tianity the teachings of Jesus or a doctrine about Jesus ?^ 
If the former be called the religion of Jesus and the Ic^tter, 
in distinction from it, be called Christianity, that is, the doc- 
trine about Jesus that began with the resurrection and in- 
terpreted him mystically, we have the antithesis presented 
by the " hberal Christianity " of the nineteenth century and 
the monistic mysticism of the twentieth. Both have an his- 
torical foundation, but a foundation much older than the 
Christian era. It is one that must be studied in the light of 
history. 

As one looks back over the long extent of acrimonious 
debate, passionate judgments, intolerance, cruelty, and vice, 
which mark the course of the stream of Christianity, one is 
tempted to say that of all religions this is the most inhumane, 
the least divine. But, on the other hand, when one sees how 
often, nay, how invariably, this turgid stream, full of abomi- 
nations made by man, suddenly clears itself and becomes 
sweet and pure again, how, through choking accumulations, 
rises ever anew the water of life, fresh from its fountain, 
one is led to ask whether any other religion in the world 
has this faculty of renovating itself, and from what source 
this particular religion has derived its marvellous power. 

The tongue of Faith will say " from God," and rest there- 
with content. But the historian will ask by what means 
God has accomplished this result. He turns to the records 
and sees that all religions tend to express the peoples who 
hold them. There are races that have no State-idea, no 
State-ideal, which recognize no obligation to the State, which 
do not make for themselves a god of the State, but rather 
bow to the powers of nature and seek to understand the mys- 
tery of nature. On the other hand, there are races which 
ignore nature more and more as they progress, which build 
up a State-ideal and make for themselves a State-god as head 
of the State, whose thought is, " The State must be saved." 
In such races, Roman, Chinese, obedience to the State and 
to its god is the basis of the higher religion, which is intelli- 

1 See Bacon, Christianity Old and New, New Haven, 1914, p. 117. 



THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY 595 

gent, ethical, demanding morality as the foundation of the 
State, as the first law of its god. Such was above all the 
Hebrew race; its religion was a race-religion; its God was 
a deity of the race and State ; its religion was ethical rather 
than mystical. In contrast to this, the religion of mysticism, 
which prevailed among the Mediterranean races, ignores the 
State in favour of the individual ; it says, not to the State but 
to the man, " Thou shalt be saved, thou shalt live again, even 
as nature dies and lives again." 

Now these two religions, the social and the personal, each 
of tremendous power, one appealing rather to the intellect, 
the other to the feeling, rarely unite as equally authoritative. 
Ethics, morality, is rather patched upon the nature-religion 
of mysticism than cognate with it. It is not first connected 
with the god integrally and then assumed as a divine qual- 
ity, for nature is not moral. Nor is mysticism a natural 
outgrowth of a belief in a transcendent deity, whose law is 
embodied in a system of ethics. So, on the one hand, ethics 
is an unimportant addition to the mystical Hindu sects and, 
on the other, mysticism is an unnatural addition to the reli- 
gion of ancient Rome. But Christianity unites these as au- 
thoritative, divinely inspired, elements. They are not for- 
mally associated ; they combine from the resurrection. God 
is transcendent, ethical, as he is immanent, embracing the 
world. Man must be moral, yet the individual soul may in 
mystic vision receive the Spirit. God is the head of the 
State; yet the individual shall be saved; he may enjoy rap- 
tures felt only by the mystic and merge his soul in the larger 
life in which the mystic seeks his God ; yet he is still at one 
with his sober co-religionist, who, if he feel no such rapture, 
yet bows to the same God. The model of his life, moreover, 
is given not in abstractions but in the person of an historical 
character, who " suffered under Pontius Pilate." 

Hence the strength of Christianity. In it divinity blends 
with humanity. Moreover, two best human types, the moral 
and the spiritual, not artificially joined but fundamentally 
blended, two ideals, that of service to the State, that of 



59^ THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 

fullest expression of the individual, have in Christianity 
been made one. To divorce this union, to declare that 
Christianity must be a system of ethics alone or a monistic 
mystery alone, is to disrupt Christianity itself. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

F. Legge, Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity, Cambridge, 

1915- 
Carl Clemen, Primitive Christianity and its non-Jewish 

Sources, Edinburgh, 19 12. 
W. Bousset, Kyrios Christos, Gottingen, 1913. 

B. W. Bacon, The Making of the New Testament, New York, 

1912; Christianity Old and New, New Haven, 1914. 
J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, London, 1891. 
Otto Pfleiderer, Early Christian Conceptions of Christ, New 

York, 1905. 

C. T. Cruttwell, A Literary History of Early Christianity, New 

York, 1893. 
Adolf Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 2nd ed. 

Freiburg, 1888-90; What is Christianity, New York, 1904. 
K. R. Hagenbach, A Text-Book of the History of Christian 

Doctrine, translated by Henry B. Smith, New York, 1861. 
W. G. T. Shedd, A History of Christian Doctrine, New York, 

1863, 
George Park Fisher, History of Christian Doctrine, New York, 

1896. 
H. O. Taylor, The Mediceval Mind, London, 191 1. 
Williston Walker, John Calvin, New York, 1906; A History of 

the Christian Church, New York, 19 18. 
H. Boehmer, Luther in the Light of Recent Research, trans- 
lated by C. F. Huth, Jr., New York, 1916. 
Josiah Royce, The Problem of Christianity , New York, 1913. 
C. M. Cobern, The Neiv Archaeological Discoveries and their 

Bearing upon the New Testament, 2nd ed., New York, 

1917. 



INDEX 



Aaron, 436, 462. 

Abbas, Abbasides, 475; Abbas 

Effendi, 482. 
Abelard, 575. 578. 
Abhidhamma, 197, 199- 
Abraham, in Babylon, 367; 

Patriarch, 418, 4^6, 581. 
Absolution, 569. 
Abstractions as spirits, 388, 487; 

non-Semitic, 441 ; Roman, 

525. 
Abu Bakr, 453 f., 470, 473- 
Acceptilatio, 587. 
Achaeans, 483 f. 
Actaeon, 346. 
Adad, Hadad, 346, 421 ; Adados, 

421. 
Adam, 573; Adam-Adapa, 352, 

419; and Iblis, 463. 
Adityas, 383. 
Adlivan, 'jj. 
Adonis, Attis, 153, 326, 346; 

etymology of, 3^, 421, 557. 
Adultery, 562. See Cassia. 
Aeschylus, 503. 
Aesculapius, Asklepios, 415, 504, 

537, physician, saviour, 559. 
Aether, divinity, 541. 
African gods, 24, 31; in Egypt 

(q.v.), 329. 

Agada, 447. 

Agape, see Love-feast 

Ages, myth of, American, loi ; 
Avestan, 395; Greek, 497. 

Agni, Fire as god, 172. 

Agriculture, 26; deities of, 
American, 95, 109; Roman, 
526. See Demeter, Grain- 
gods. 



Ahriman, hostile evil spirit, 
379 f, 383, 403; host of, 387 f. 
See Evil One. 

Ahura, see Ormuzd. 

Ainus, 46 f., 275, 282. 

Ajivikas, 181. 

Akbar, 475. 

Akkad, Akkadians, 55, 344; 
theory, 15. 

Akmo (Stone), sky as god, 142. 

Albigenses, Cathari, Manichaean, 

571- 
Aleuts, 2.2, 76. 
Alexander, myth of, 353, 376, 

462; god, 509. 
Alexander Severus, 549. 
Alexandria, 440, 557; school of, 

563. 567. 
Al-Ghazali, 479. 
Ali, Aliites, 453 f., 473 f., 481. 
Allah, 452, 471. See Divinity. 
Allat, 365, 452. 

Allegorical interpretation, 541. 
All-father, 158; All-god, 208, 

211, 503; All-soul, 178; All- 
Souls in Japan, 278. 
Alogoi, 561. 

Amaterasu, Omikami, 281. 
Ambactonos, 124. 
Ambrose, St., 543, 57i, 574- 
American religions, 75 f. 
Ames, E. S., 41. 
Amesha Spentas, Amshaspands, 

Z7^, 380 f ., 384 f . 
Amida, Amitabha, Amitayus, 

192, 198, 296! 
Ammonites, Melek of, 415, 425. 
Amon, and Aton (q. v.),, 314, 

320; Amon-Re, 322. 



597 



598 



INDEX 



Amoraiin, 448. 

Amorites, 346, 349, 369. 

Amos, 425, 431 f., 433. 

Amulets, 25, 'j'j \ paper, for dead, 
105. See Charms, Fetish. 

Amurrii, 349. 

Anabaptists, 576, 584, 588. 

Anahita, 346, 386, 411. 

Anathemas, 67. 

Anaxagoras, 501, 504. 

Ancestors, savage cult of, 28, 55, 
58, 65, 84; female, 170; in 
China, 228 f.; in Japan, 277; 
tablets of, 247, 284; in Bab- 
ylon, 359, 365; Arabic clan-, 
365; in Greece, 483. See 
Ghosts, Shinto. 

Andaman Islanders, 5. 

Andra, Audra, 142, 172. 

Androgynous gods, 92. See El, 
Shiva. 

Anesaki, M., 307. 

Angakok, 76. 

Angels, 385, 439; lists of, 405, 
439, 466, 472 ; guardians of na- 
tions, 438; of heaven and hell, 
466 f.; bear God's throne, 466; 
daughters of God, 454, 470; 
and stars, 463, 508 ; deified, 428 ; 
sexless, 472 ; recording, 473 ; 
archangels, 383. 

Angus, 133. 

Animals, as ghosts and gods, 50, 
109; calf-god, 316, 416; sacred, 
78, 90 ; Celtic, 125' f . ; Indie, 
170, 175 f . ; Chinese, 243, 246 ; 
Jain and Chinese compassion 
for, 180, 269; as men, 284; 
-symbols, 422; in Egypt, 310, 
313 f.; in Greece, 486. See 
Boar, Bull, Elephant, Totem. 

Animism, 11, 19, 35, 48, 78, 228. 
See Soul. 

Annunaki, 349. 

Anselm, Bishop, 572, 575, 578, 
587. 

Anthesteria, 495, 

Antinomians, 308, 587. 

Antioch, 462; school of, 567, 
Antiochus Epiphanes, 444. 



Anu or Danu, Celtic divinity, 
124; Babylonian, 347 f., 351 f. 

Anubis, 319. 

Aphrodite, 485, 510, 538. 

Apis, Serapis, 316. 

Apollo, 105 ; herd-god, 484 f ., 
487; sun, 489; oracle of, 494, 
503; in Rome, 538. 

Apop, 315, 321. 

Apostle, see Mohammed; Apos- 
tles, 552 f . ; creed of, 560. 

Apotropaic rites, fire and shoot- 
ing, 108; race, 112; fire-rite, 
130, 152; Indie, 17s; Chinese, 
244; Greek, 493, 495. See 
Lustration. 

Arabic cult, 364, 452 f. ; culture, 

475- 

Aralu, 358. 

Aramaic language, 440, 447; 
Aramaeans, 420. 

Araucanians, 108 f. 

Archaeology, 8. 

Arda Viraf, 406. 

Ares, 485. 

Arhats (Rakan, Worthies), 
190 f. ; in japan, 302. 

Aristotle, 505 f . ; and Moses, 449. 

Arius, 565 f. 

Ark, 356; of covenant, 417. 

Arniaiti, 384 f. 

Armenian Church, 569. 

Arminians (disciples of Her- 
mann), 574, 587, 590. 

Arnobius, 571, 581. 

Arnold, Matthevsr, 6. 

Artemis, Artio, 127, 346, 485, 
497, 526, 538, 557; tauropolis, 
411. 

Arthur, King, 127, 134 f . 

Articles, Thirty-nine, 591. 

Aru Islanders, 20, 44. 

Aruru, 352 f ., 365. 

Arvales, Fratres, 519, 546. 

Aryan religion, 16, 120, 171, 309, 

365. 
Asakav^^a, K., 302. 
Asceticism, 178, 479, 562. See 

Fetish. 
Asanga, 200. 



INDEX 



599 



Asha, arta, rita, Right (Order), 

383. 3S5f. 

Asharites (Al-Ashari), 477. 

Asher, tribe, 421 ; asheri^s, z^, 
421, 425. See Grove. 

Ashoka (Asoka), 183. 

Ashur, Assyrians, 345 f ., 349 f., 
ethics of, 364; influence of, 
424, 432. 

Ashurbanipal, 347; library of, 
368 f. 

Ashvaghosha, 197, 200. 

Asmodeus, 387 f-, 405, 409, 439- 
See Angels. 

Assassins, religious sect, 478, 
480. 

Astarte, Astoreth, 421 f., 423. 

Astrology, Taoist, 270; Babylon- 
ian, 360; Greek, 508. 

Asura, 172, 2>72 f. See Ormuzd. 

Atargatis, 539. 

Athanasius, 566, 576. 

Atharva Veda, 172 f. 

Athene, 485, 487. 

Athtar, 366. 

Atlas, Bogota form, 109. 

Atman, breath, soul, 188. 

Aton, 334 f . ; Atum, 320 ; Re-, 324. 

Atonement, in China, 242; day 
of, 363, 437; Jewish concep- 
tion of, 450; Christian, 559, 
575» 587. See Sacrifice, Re- 
demption. 

Atrakhasis, Xisuthros, 356. 

Attis, 539, 556. See Adonis. 

Atua, 60 f. 

Atys, see Attis. 

Augures, 530, 543; augury in 
China, 270. See Divination. 

Augustine, St., i, 55i f-, 564; 
doctrine of, 214, 567 f., 570 f., 
S7Zj 579 > nuns and monks of, 
572. 

Augustus, Emperor, 546 f. 

Aureole and nimbus, 580. 

Australian religion, 17, 20. 

Avaiki, 62. 

Avallon, 131. 

Avalokiteshvara, 198, 201, 298; 
as Kuannon, Kuanyin, 270. 



Avatars, 209 f. 

Avesta, 373 f . 

Axe, symbol, 130. 

Ayesha, 470. 

Azhi Dahaka, see Dragon. 

Aztecs, 90, 94 f., 102 f . 

Baal, see Bel. 

Babis, 479, 482. 

Babylon, 175, 226, 272; religion 

of, 344 f.; influence, 346, 438; 

festivals, 353; Bapel, 388; 

tower of, 419, 428. 
Backbone, as serpent, 51, 494. 
Bacon, B. W., 594. 
Bahis, 479, 482. 
Balder, 151, 154, 161. 
Bantus, 25. 
Baptism, 33, 65, 86, 118, 558, 560, 

569, 574, 581; Baptist sects, 

592. 
Bar Cocheba, 441, 449. 
Bardesanes, 272, 568. 
Barnabas, 575. 
Barton, G. A., 415, 419, 441. 
Baruti, Barim, 361, 424. 
Barzdukai, 143. 
Basil, the Great, 576. 
Basilides, 563, 575. 
Bast, 317, 321. 
Batchelor, John, 47 f, 
Bath, purgation, 85; sweat-bath, 

86, 91. 
Beans, food for ghosts, 504, 524. 
Bear-cult, 50 f. 
Bedouins, 455, 466. 
Beelzebub, 416. 

Beer-ritual, 172. See Intoxi- 
cants, Soma. 
Bees, god of, 97; Slavic, 142. 
Bel, Baal, Belit, 348, 365, 421 ; 

Bel-Marduk, 349, 351; Baal- 

Berith, 423. 
Belenos, 123. 
Belgians, 124. 
Bendis, Moon, 509. 
Benedict, order of, 576, 583. 
Ben Sira, 443, 449, 558. 
Beowulf, 164. 
Bernhard, 577 f. 



6oo 



INDEX 



Berosus, 356. 

Berserkers, 165. 

Bhagavad-GIta, 211 f., 216. 

Bhakti, 197, 211 f., 213 f. 

Bhandarkar, Sir R., 212. 

Bible, 578, 584. 

Bida, Usage, as religious prin- 
ciple, 481. 

Bile, 132. 

Bird, Isabella, 47 f. 

Birds, American belief, 78; 
make wind, 82 ; bird-man, 93 ; 
of hell, messengers, 97; hum- 
ing-bird god, 103 ; in divina- 
tion, 115, 153; praise God, 
461 f.; raven, yS; goose, 126; 
hawk, I2T, 133; owl, 142. See 
Augury, Horus, Kirke, Soul. 

Birth, mysterious, 135; miracu- 
lous, of Confucius, Zoroaster, 
Mohammed, etc., see under 
each; divinity of, 538. See 
Regeneration, Taboo, Virgin- 
birth. 

Bishops, 559, 562, 570 f.. 586. 

Blood, 70, 74 ; spilling of, 97 ; for 
vegetation 99, 170; reveals 
murderer, 152; offering to 
ghosts and demons, 175; -soul, 
245; gods born of, 280; -broth- 
erhood,' 365; -offering, 421; in 
Roman cult, 528; of martyrs, 
565. See Atonement 

Boadicea, Boudicca, goddess, 

133. 

Boar, in Adonis-myth, 422. See 
Suovitaurilia. 

Boccaccio, 577. 

Bodhidharma, in China, 271, 295. 

Bodhisat, 191 f. 

Boehme, 579. 

Bogu, Bagaios, 144. 

Bolsec, 589. 

Bona Dea, 529, 537, 

Book of the Dead, 311 ; of the 
Gates and of the Other 
World, 329 f ; of Rewards, etc., 
268; of Secret Blessings, 268. 
See Bible. 

Borneo, 20, 100, 141. 



Borvo, Bourbon deity, 126. 

Brahma, as power, 67; world- 
power, 174, 178, 185, 205. 

Brahman, Creator, 173, 178, 
205 f., 501. 

Brahman s, Brahmanic gods in 
Japan, 301 f . ; Celtic parallel 
to Brahmans, 128; Brahmans 
in Buddhism, 186. 

Bran, Celtic, 133. 

Bread and Tea sect, 272. 

Breasted, J. H., 327, 337. 

Breath, as soul, 88. See Atman, 
Spirit. 

Bridge of souls, 88 f.; of hair, 
115; of separation and judg- 
ment, 382 f ., 393 f. ; El Aaraf , 
467. See Rainbow, Soul. 

Brigit, St., 131. 

Brihaspati, 131. 

Britain, Prydain, 134. 

Britomartis, 485. 

Brotherhood of man, 207, 506, 
513, 545- 

Bruno, 579. 

Buddha, 178, 183 f. ; 216; as 
mother, 270; birthday (April 
8), 293; and Heraclitus, 500; 
as Christian saint, 580, 

Buddhism, 2, 53, 57, 183 f. ; and 
Upanishads, 178; four truths 
of, 184; eight precepts of, 187; 
Hina and Mahayana, 190, 192, 
194, 200; Tantra and Mantra- 
yana, 204 f. ; and Gospels, 19S, 
552; church and ethics of, 196; 
in China, etc., 197; sects, 203; 
literature of, 197, 294; esoteric, 
201 ; in Tibet, 203 ; in China, 
244, 263 f ., 266, 272 ; in Japan, 
287 f., 306 ; Japanese sects, 
292 f. ; traits of, in Chinese re- 
ligion, 227, 252 f ., 265 ; in 
Japan, 281 f ., 284 ; militant 
monks of, 291 f. 

Buddhaghosha, 197. 

Budge, E. A. W., 315. 

Bulgarians, 138. 

Bull, as god, 176, 316; -feast, 
126; of Shiva, 207; -sacrifice, 



INDEX 



6oi 



208 ; Chinese, 241 ; bull-slay- 
ing, tanroktonos, 411. See 
Apis, Dionysos. 

Bulla, as fetish, 42. 

Burial, 8, 33, 63, 77; third day 
after death, 72; articles 
broken at, SS; Celtic, 132; 
Slavic, 14s ; Scandinavian, 
150; of the living, 239, 278; 
Zoroastrian, 389, 402; Greek, 
496; Roman, 524 f. See Sut- 
tee, Taboo. 

Bushido, 285. 

Bushmen, 24 f. 

Butler, Bishop, 4; Chinese par- 
allel, 259. 

Caesar, Julius, account of Bri- 
tain, 122 f. ; of Germany, 151 
f. ; and priestly college, 530; 
and cult of Bacchus, 547. 

Cain, as Kenite, 418. 

Caitanya, 210, 215. 

Caird, Edward, 5. 

Calendar, Aztec, 106; Chinese, 
226; Roman, 526; nefas or 
taboo (knot) days, 362. 

Calf, Golden, see Animals. 

Caliph, Caliphates, 473. 

Callaway, Bishop, 27. 

Camulus and Himmel, 123. 

Calvin, John, 572, 574, 581 f., 
587 f. 

Canaan, 366, 420 f. 

Candles, for corpse, see Fire. 

Cannibalism, 27, 33^ 64, 80. 

Carib, as cannibal, 80. 

Carnoy, A. J., 406. 

Caro, Joseph, 448. 

Carthage, 539. 

Carvaka, 264. 

Casmenta (carmen), 528. 

Cassia, ordeal, 39. 

Castes, South American, 107; 
Indie, 174; in Buddhism, 186; 
Shivaite disregard of, 207. 

Castor, 526, 529. 

Cato, 541. 

Caves as graves, 115; pictures 
of, 8, 42, 121; as temples, 112. 



Celibacy, 479. See Monasteries. 
Celtic religion, 61, 96, 120 f. 
Ceres, 36, 545. 
Chac, gods, 95- 

Chalcedon, Council of, 567, 572; 
Chalcedonian Christology, 571. 
Chaldaeans, 360, 508, 547. 
Chamberlain, B. H., 48. 
Chanuka, feast of lights, 450. 
Charila, American parallel of, 

lOI. 

Charms, 62, 548; Egyptian, 
329. See Amulets, Fetish, 
Karakia. 

Chassidists, 449. 

Chemi, 40. 

Chemosh, 423. 

Cheops, 313. 

Cherubim, 439. 

Chiliasm, 576, 

China, Chinese, tablets, 80; re- 
ligion, 224 f . ; contact with the 
West, 273; with Japan, 275, 
285 f. See Babylon, Buddhism. 

Chou-Tuni, 264. 

Christ, Christian religion, 552 f. 5 
influence on Slavs., Hindus^ 
etc., 145, 213 f ., 216 f. ; in 
Japan, 303 f . ; parallels, 383, 
396 f . ; in China, 267 ; and 
Jews, 441, 451; and Moham- 
med, 458; borrowed from 
Rome, 545; aided by Pax Ro- 
mana, 546; definition of Chris- 
tianity, 593 f . ; Christmas, 546, 

548, 553- 
Chrysippus, 506, 508, 541. 
Chrysostom, 572. 
Chthonic divinities, 493 ; at 

Rome, S40. See Earth. 
Chuang-tse, 252, 255 f ., 260. 
Chu-Hi, 264, 285, 300. 
Cicero, 3, 543. 

Circumcision 34, 60, 417, 438. 
Cistercians, 577. 
Clan-gods, 416. 

Classification of religions, 10 f. 
Clay, A. T., 367. 
Clement, of Alexandria^ 557, 564, 

566, 572; of Rome, 559. 



6o2 



INDEX 



Cluny, monastery, reforms insti- 
tuted by, 577. 

Cocoa, worship of, 112. 

Cocks, oppose evil spirits, in 
China, 243 ; in Avesta, 400. 

Colours, 34, 60, 67, 102; of di- 
rection-gods, 92, 107; of sun- 
god, black and red, 104; of 
rivers of hell, 105 ; of Amesha 
Spentas, 384 ; Mohammedan, 
green, 465. 

Communion with gods, 163; 
through eating, 49, 58, 100, 118; 
prayer, 87; intoxication, 100; 
in India, 173 f. ; in Babylon, 
349, 36s; Hebraic, 415; 
Greek, 499; Roman, 534, 540; 
Christian, 558, 569. See Eu- 
charist. 

Conchobar, Cooley, god or hero, 

135. 

Confession, 99; in Peru, 118; 
Buddhistic, 197 ; Zoroastrian, 
391; Christian, 560; Calvin's, 
589. See Fravashi. 

Confucius, 224 f., 243, 249 f., 
251 f., 25s; and Mencius, 258; 
deified, 256, 271 ; and Moh, 
260. 

Conopas, 112. 

Constantine, 550, 566. 

Consubstantiation, 582. 

Cook, A. B., 485. 

Coptic United Church, 569. 

Corn-genius, see Grain. 

Councils of Aries, Chalcedon, 
Trent, 574, 576. 

Couvade, 49. 

Covenant, Book of the, 425, 433; 
code ratified by, 435. 

Creation, myth of, 84, 97; from 
nothing, 398 ; creator-gods, 
105, 109, 113, 117, 173; in Bud- 
dhism, 184, 198 ; in China, 245 ; 
in Japan, 282 ; in Babylon, 350, 
353, 369; creationism, 573. See 
Ancestors, Evolution, 

Creeds, of third century, 565; 
Apostles', 560; Nicene, 566. 

Cremation, ss; American, 88; 



Slavic, 145; German, 150; 

Achaean, 496. 
Crete, 332, 483 f., 502, 513. 
Cromlech, 121. 
Cross, Aztec as tree of life, 

106 f.; cross and crucifix, 569; 

cross-road spirits, 129. 
Crusades, 583 f. 
Culture-heroes, myth of, 70, 

83 f. ; Peruvian, 113; Tohil, 95; 

Chibcha, 109; -goddess, 96; 

heroine, no; German, 164. 
Cumont, F., 412 f . 
Curse, 491. 
Cuthah, 358. 
Cybele, 502, 509 f., 529, 556. See 

Attis, Magna Mater. 
Cyprian, 572, 574. 
Cyrus, 373, 434; as Messiah, 

441. 

Daevas, 380!, 388, 404 

Dagda (Daksha), 131, 133. 

Dagon, 424. 

Daimios, 286. 

Dakhmas, 389, 402. 

Damnation, 581, 590. 

Dance, 19 f ., 22, 25 f ., 30, 34, 82 ; 
fertility-, 97, 100, 112, 153; 
death-, 64, 240; of dead, 78; 
American, 85, 87, 91 ; widder- 
shins, 92 ; deasil, 129 ; on stilts, 
97 ; religion of, 109 ; initiation-, 
196; Indie, 170; Kogura, 281; 
ritual, 284; Hebraic, 425, 
433 f . ; Roman, 530 ; Christian, 
19. See Sun. 

Danhu, Dasyu, see^ Demon na- 
tion. 

Daniel, 405, 409, 433 f-, 443- 

Dante, 406, 577. 

Danu, 124, 133. 

Darius, 373. 

Darmesteter, J., 16, 376, 385, 408. 

David, 418, 424. 

Dawn, African divinity, 26; 
American, 90 ; Slavic, 139, 142 ; 
Indie, 172, 176. 

Days, and planets, 508; Friday, 
455; Judgment Day, 454, 457, 



INDEX 



603 



468, 471 ; day of rest, 464 ; 
Roman, 536. See Calendar, 
Sabbath, Taboo. 

Dayananda, 2ig £., 222. 

Deasil, see Dance, Sun. 

De Civitate Dei, 572. 

Dead, disposal of, 88, 389, 524; 
offerings to, 131, 241 ; feast of, 
152; god of, Woden, 159; Ann- 
bis, 319, 330; Greek and 
Roman treatment of, 493, 5^4^ 
545. See Burial, Cremation, 
Dog, Embalming. 

Death, as illness and sleep, 66; 
as spirit, ^T, 96, 105; Mara, as 
the Evil One, 195; servant of 
Evil One, 398. 

Deborah, song of, 419. 

Decalogue, 429 f . 

Decemviri, 530, 540. 

Decins, 565. 

Definitions of religion, i f. 

De Groot, J. J. M., 229. 

Deification, of men, 2>2)y 60; of 
kings, 365. 

Deives and daevas, 143 f. 

De la Grasserie, 10. 

Delphi, 489. 

Deluge, common belief in, (i2, 84, 
97, loi, 109; Indie, 174; 
Babylonian, 350, 355; Hebrew, 

367, 369, 419, 427. 
Demeter, 485 f., 487 f., 494 f., 

497 f.; as Christian saint, 510; 

in Rome, 538. See Grain- 
spirit. 
Democritus, 500. 
Demon nations, Chinese, Aves- 

tan, 238, ■})7'2- 
Demonology, 172, 243; Chinese, 

270; Japanese, 301 ; Greek, 501. 

See Animals, Ghosts, Spirits. 
Dependence on gods, 422. 
Depravity, total, of Calvin, 590. 
Derketo, 422, 424. 
Dervishes, 433, 479. 
Descartes, 579. 

Desire, 189. See Love, Thirst. 
Determinism, 443, 574. 
Deus, 7. 



Deuteronomy, 433. 

Devil, see Satan. 

Devouress of hell, 340 f. 

Dharma, law and God, dhar- 
makaya, 191 f. ; Japanese form, 
301. 

Dharmaraksha, in China, 271. 

Diana of Aricia, 525. 

Diasia, 495. 

Diatessaron, 564. 

Didache, Teaching of the Apos- 
tles, 560. 

Digambara ( Sky-garment) , sect 
of Jains, 181. 

Diocletian, Emperor, 549, 566. 

Dione, 487 f., 522. 

Dionysos, 484?., 494 f., 498, 502; 
Indie form, 206 ; Bacchus in 
Rome, 538, 547; Epiphany and 
miracle of, 553, 556. 

Direction-gods, see Quarters, 
Winds. 

Disease-demons, Z'^-, 59 f ., 96, 
538; as Mothers, 105; plague 
as goddess, 143. 

Dis Pater, Celtic form, 122, 130, 
132. 

Divination, no, 115; Celtic, 
126 f . ; Slavic, 144 ; German, 
153; Chinese, 237, 245, 270; 
Japanese, 284; Babylonian, 
361, 366; Greek, 491, 494; ar- 
row-, 361, 467; Hver-, 361; tor- 
toise-, 245. See Augury, 
Birds, Horse. 

Divinity, concept of, as power, 
61 ; god as invoked, 164 ; sav- 
age idea of, 34, 83, 90; Na- 
huan, 106; Peruvian, 113; de- 
fined by negation, 178; in Bud- 
dhism, 193; of Ramanuja, 213; 
Chinese, 231 f., 261 ; Japanese, 
307; Egyptian, 334. Hebrew, 
451 ; Mohammedan, 460, 463. 

Docetism, Buddhistic, 303 ; 
Greek, Manichaean, Gnostic, 
559. 

Dodona, Celtic, 127. 

Dog, and the dead, 89; escorts 
soul, 105, 115; catches soul, 



6o4 



INDEX 



145; averts devils, 404; sacri- 
fice of, 82, 90, 96 f.; as ances- 
tor, 84; Kerberos and Celtic 
dog of dead, 132 ; dog and fer- 
tility, 151, 163; man as dog 
or slave, of god, 422. 

Dominicans, 577. 

Domitian, Emperor, 548, 565. 

Donatus, views of, 571. 

Door, avoidance of, 472; -spirit, 
518. See Janus. 

Dorsitheans, 446. 

Doshisha, school, 307. 

Douglas, R. K., 271. 

Doukhabors, 569. 

Dragon, Chinese, 246, 269; 
Egyptian, 315; Dragon-slayer, 
^PT, Azhi-Dahaka, 388, 405. 
407; Hebraic, 439. See Ser- 
pent. 

Drama, religious, 19, 25, ^y, 87, 
91 ; vegetation-, 99 ; in Peru, 
116 f. ; Indie, 178, 196, 207, 211 ; 
Egyptian, 340 ; Greek, 498, 502 ; 
Purim, 450; Roman, 529, 536. 

Dravidians, 55, 170 f., 175, 208. 

Dreams, no, 126, 153, 361. 

Drought, as demon, 243. 

Druids, 127 f., 494, 547- 

Druj, Lie as demon, 388. 

Dryads, 486. 

Dualism, %2i\ Sankhya, 207; 
Slavic, 148; Teutonic, 167; 
Yoga, 178; Semitic, 366; Zoro- 
astrian, 379; Greek, 511 

Dumuzi, see Tammuz. 

Duns Scotus, 578, 587. 

Durga, 207. 

Durkheim, E., 6, 12. 

Dyaus, 172. 



Ea, 347 f., and Adapa, 352, 355. 

Earth-spirit, 34, 92; Celtic, 130; 
Indie, 172; in Peru, 112; 
Slavic, 141 ; in China, 228 ; in 
Japan, 279 ; in Rome, 526. See 
Demeter, Grain-spirit, Mother. 

Easter, 570. 

Ebionites, 561. 



Echo, spirit, 62. 

Eckhardt, 578. 

Eclipse, 49, 108, 156. 

Ecstasy, 57, 112, 433. See 
Shamanism. 

Eden, 468. See Paradise. 

Edwards, J., 574. 

Egg, cosmic, 112, 398, 504. 

Egypt, religion of, 309 f. ; de- 
rivation of name, 310; history, 
312; and Palestine, 420; and 
Greece, 502. 

Eisai, 295, 

El, Lord, 365 ; of Babylon, 423. 

El Aaraf, see Bridge. 

Elagabalus, 549. 

Elect, election, 574, 590. 

Elements, five Chinese, 244, 264; 
and planets, 269; four Greek, 
500; Stoic, 506; stoicheia, 508. 

Elephant-god, 207. 

Elizabeth, Queen, 580, 591. 

Eleusis, 494 f., 498. See Myste- 
ries. 

El 'Hidhr, 462. 

Elijah, Elisha, 359, 424, 430, 442. 

Ellis, Col., 29 f., 38. 

Elves, 149, 166 f . 

Elysium, 348, 330, 332, 502. 

Embalming, 115, 340. See Bu- 
rial, Dead. 

Empedocles, 500, 503. 

Emperor, of China, deified, 230 f . 
See Augustus. 

England as Engel-land, 164. 

Enkidu, 353 f ., 360. 

Enlil, 347, 356. , 

Ennead, see Triad. 

Ennius, 541. 

Enoch, 359, 442. 

Epictetus, 548, 552. 

Epicurus, 508, 540; Chinese Epi- 
cureanism, 263. 

Epiphanius, 568. 

Epiphany, 553. See Dionysos. 

Epona, horse-goddess, 125 f. 

Ereshkigal, 348, 357 f-, 365. 

Erinyes, 496. 

Eroticism, see Mysticism. 

Eschatology, savage belief, 20, 



INDEX 



605 



27, 33, 58, 62 f ., 77. 87 f ., 105, 
115; Celtic, 131 f.; Slavic, 145; 
Indie, 175, 178; Chinese, 
229 f. ; Japanese, 277 i. ; Egyp- 
tian, 311, 3^8 f.; Babylonian, 
364 f., 357; Zoroastrian, 392 f., 
396 f.; Hebraic, 442; Moham- 
medan, 465 f.; Greek, 497; 
Roman, 524; Christian, 558. 
See Sheol, Walhalla. 

Eskimos, 37, 42, 71, 75 f. 

Essenes, 72, 446, 534, 573- 

Esther, 362, 450. 

Esus, Aes, 125, 132. 

Etana, Ethan, 357, 360. 

Ethics, savage, 22, 39, 41, 73, 75, 
90, 118; and religion, 595; in 
Slavic religion, 147; Teutonic, 
167; Vedic, 178; Buddhistic, 
185, 196; relation between 
ethics and religion in China, 
238, 256, 268; good for evil, 
251; Japanese, 285, 288; Egyp- 
tian, 311, 340; Babylonian, 359, 
3^3y 368; Zoroastrian, 389 f., 
392; Hebraic, 415, 425, 431, 
450; Mohammedan, 456, 469; 
Greek, 485, 491, 501, 513; 
Roman, 531, 549; Christian, 
526, 529- 

Ethnography, 9. 

Etruria, Etruscan culture, 517 f ., 
526, 539. 

Eubuleus, 495. 

Eucharist, 559, 576, 582, 585. See 
Communion. 

Euhemerus, 541 ; euhemerized 
gods, 123 f ., 497 ; in China, 244, 
269; Mohammed's family as 
nature-gods, 478; Roman, 
546 f, 

Eumenides, 497. See Manes. 

Euripides, 501 f., 503. 

Eusebius, 566, 576. 

Eutyches, 567. 

Eve, 360. 

Evil, origin of, 502, 563 ; evil 
eye, 240; Agashi, 388, 404; 
Evil One as death, 195 ; Ahri- 
man, 374, 37S f., 404 f . ; created 



by Zeus, 502 ; by God, 439, 464 ; 

See Satan, Sin. 
Evolution, 66; Zoroastrian, 398. 
Exile, Jewish, 424, 434. 
Ezekiel, 433 f •, 435, 438 f., 441 f . 
Ezra, 435, 443; son o£ God, 454. 

Fahien, 198, 266. 

Fairies, 124; king of, 123, 131; 
Welsh, 134; Slavic, 143. 

Faith, in Buddhism, 184, 187; 
Sraosha, 384 f . ; faith-sects, 
211 ; in Japan, 296 f. ; Christian 
doctrine of, 574, 586 f , ; con- 
fession of, 191. 

Falashas, 446. 

Fanatici, 539. 

Farnell, L. R., 346, 484 f. 

Fasts, fasting, 40, 85, 91, 97, 
no, 118, 417, Ramadhan, 468; 
Christian, 586. 

Fate, in China, 263, 264; Semitic 
belief, 363 ; Mohammedan, 
458, 465, 476; three Fates, 486, 
490; wyrd, 166. 

Father-god, 173, 207, 451, 460. 

Fatima, Fatimites, 474, 480. 

Fauna, Faunus, 537, 538. 

Fear, as god, 208. See Sebas. 

Female element, 61; Lettic, 140; 
Hindu, 208; Chinese, 248; 
Japanese, 301 ; Allat, 365. 

Feng Shui, 270. 

Fenrir, 156. 

Feralia, 495, 524, 528. 

Fertility-spirit, 34; thunder as, 
95; -rite, 91 f., 97, 99, 170; 
goddess with many breasts, 
100; charms, 104, 112; sym- 
bols, Celtic, 130, 133; German, 
151, 154, 158, 160, 162 f.; Japa- 
nese harvest-god, 283; Bab- 
ylonian, 348; Canaanite, 366, 
422 ; Greek, 495 ; Roman, 536 f ., 
531. See Grain-spirit. 

Festivals, Yam, 24; taboo at, 70; 
as sacrifice, 97; American, 90, 
97; Celtic, 129 f.; Slavic, 144; 
German, 152; Puranic, 218; 
Chinese, 242; Egyptian, 331 £.; 



6o6 



INDEX 



Babylonian, 348, 362 f ., 366 ; 
Hebraic, 425, 438 ; Roman, 535. 
See Christmas, Grain -spirit. 
Saturnalia. 

Fetish, 8, 19 f ., 26, 29 f ., 35 f., 41 ; 
South American, 110, 112, 115; 
Indie, 218; -stone, 456. 

Fiji, 2.2, 60, 63, 66. 

Fikh, 476. 

Filioque, 568 f. 

Finn, Celtic, 123; Finns, 18, 60, 
149. 

Firdaus, 466. See Paradise. 

Fire, worship of, 2>^, 49, 79 ; 
-dragon, 90; renewal of, .96, 
112, 114; Aztec, old god, 102; 
Peruvian, 114; Celtic, 129 f. ; 
Slavic, 140, 142 ; German, need- 
fire, 151 f., 153; Indie, 172, 
175 ; Chinese corpse-candles, 
241 ; -walking, 246 ; Japanese 
cult, 279; Zoroastrian, 383 f., 
385 ; -altars, 386, 404 ; taboo of, 
362; Roman, against spirits, 
526; Vestal, 531; Volcanus, 
538. See Virgin. 

Fish, god, 24, 61, 112, 175, 209, 
422; -taboo, 71. 

Flaying, in sacrifice, 98 f., no. 

Flora, 536. 

Flowers, offerings of, in Peru, 
106; in India, 170; in Japan, 
289. 

Fomorach, 133. 

Food, divinities of, 112; -sacri- 
fice, 242 ; -goddess, 282 f. 

Footsteps of gods, 117. 

Forke, A., 245, 264. 

Fortuna, 525 ; Fortune, goddess, 
139, 144, 508 f., 538. See Gad, 
Tyche. 

Fountain-gods, 142 ; Fountain 
of Youth, 86, 462; Fontinalia, 

527. 
Fox, George, 591. 
Foxes, Chinese, 243; Japanese, 

283. 
Francis, St., Franciscans, 577, 

583. 
Francke, A. H., 591. 



Fravashi, 376, 392 f. 

Frazer, Sir J., 3, 12, 71, 325, 342. 

Free-will, 394, 443, 47^, 564- 

Freyja, Fngg, Freyr, 151, 156, 
162 f. 

Friars, 577, 584. 

Frogs, in fertility-rite, 92. 

Functional gods, 60, 96; of mer- 
chants, 194; Slavic, 139 f., 143; 
Greek and Roman, 487, 524. 
See Numina. 

Future life, see Eschatology. 

Gabirol, 449. 

Gad, Fortune as deity, 421. 

Gamaliel, 447, 558. 

Games, in honour of gods, 
Aztec, 104; Peruvian, 117; ludi 
Romani, etc., 529, 540. 

Gandharva, Ganderewa, 389. 

Ganesha, Elephant-god, 207. 

Garbe, R., 196, 217. 

Garden-god, 142. 

Gathas, hymns, Zoroastrian, 171, 
376; Buddhistic, 197. 

Geb, 320, 2)'2''7- 

Gehenna, Ge Flinnom, 426, 468; 
Jehennum, 472. 

Geku, 282. 

Gellius, 533. 

Gemara, 447. 

Genesis, 351. 

Genius, spirit, 523 f . ; of Augus- 
tus, etc., 546 f . 

Genku, Honen, 297. 

Genshin, 292. 

Geonim, 448. 

Germans, 8 f . ; and Celts, 124 f. ; 
characteristics of, 150 f. See 
Kultur. 

Ghebers, Guebers, 410. 

Ghosts, 22, 2^:,, 27, 29, 34, 47 f., 
59 f., 62, 65 f ., 76, 79, 146 ; Ger- 
man, as churchyard flames, 
152, 164; Chinese, 228, 244 f. ; 
as hot air, 264; Hebrew 417; 
Greek, 495, 502; Roman, 524. 
See Ancestors, Dead, Spir-ts. 

Giants, 62; of stone, o?, loi ; 3'- 
gota, as Atlas, log; Celti. . 0^;;, 



INDEX 



607 



133; Teutonic, stupid, 152, 
161 £,, 166. 

Giles, H. A., 229; Lionel, 262. 

Gilgamesh, 353, 359 ; deified 
king, 365. 

Gnomes, 143. 

Gnosticism, 478, 459 f., 563 i; 572. 

Goblins, 279. 

Gods, paired, 92; return of, 105, 
zS^; men as, 117; groups of, 
159; transparent, 172; nominal 
gods, 280 ; names of Arab gods, 
462; of God, 402, 463, 472. 

Gog and Magog, 462. 

Gohei, 282. 

Golden Age, Chinese, 251. See 
Yima. 

Goldziher, L, 481. 

Gosala, 181. 

Gospels, see Synoptic Gospels. 

Goths, 572. 

Grace, 497, 511, S7if-; irresist- 
ible, 590. 

Graebner, R, 16. 

Graecus ritus, in Rome, 540. 

Grail, origin of, 132 f. 

Grain-spirit, 98, 112, 130, 142, 
146, 528, 539; as serpent, 103. 
See Ceres, Cocoa, Demeter, 
Fertility-spirit, Kurcha. 

Gratitude, to spirits, 26, 64, 80, 
87, 91, 140; Chinese, 230; Japa- 
nese, 279; Roman, 533. 

Greece, usages, parallels to, 9, 
44, 60, 76, 90, 10 1 ; and Egypt, 
329, S3^; and Palestine, 440; 
Greeks to Mohammed, 472 ; re- 
ligion of, 483 f . ; gods of in 
Rome, 535, 538 f. 

Greek (Eastern Orthodox) 
Church, 568 f. 

Gregory, 566; of Nazianzus, 568, 
575 ; and the Great, 576, 580. 

Grierson, Sir George, 217. 

Griffin, Hittite, 439. 

Grotius, H., 587. 

Groves, religious use of, 61, 124, 
138, 144, 151, 155, 170; Ashera, 
366, 421 ; Greek, 490. See 
Trees. 



Gruppe, O., 15. 

Gudea, 345. 

Guru, as Presbyter, represents 
God, 215; Mohammedan par- 
allel, 478. 

Gwenhwyfar, Arthur's wife, as 
spectre, 132. 

Gwydion, 125, 131. 

Gyogi Bosatsu, 293. 



Habakkuk, 43. 

Hachiman, 276. 

Hadad, see Adad. 

Hades, 485, 502. 

Hagiographa, 434. 

Hair, as soul-power, 33 f ., 49 ; 
in America, 89 ; of victim, 102 ; 
of sun, 103; offered to sun, 
no; Chinese belief, 245; as 
strength, offered to the dead, 
359. 

Hajj, hagg, 473, 478. 

Halaka, 447. 

Hammer, for fertility, see Thor. 

Hammurabi, 345 f ., 350 ; code of, 

367 f. 

Han, dynasty and scholars, 227, 
231, 238, 260. 

Hanbal, Hanbalites, school, 477, 
481. 

Hanifites, school, 481. 

Harpies, 496. 

Harpocrates, Egyptian origin 
of, 325. 

Harrison, Frederic, 2 ; Miss Jane, 
18, 496, 502, 504. 

Harvest-god, 283. See Fertility- 
spirit. 

Hathor, cow-goddess, 321, 325. 

Healing, gods of, 95, 105; in 
Greece, 487; Apollo, 122; Wo- 
den, 158; in Rome, 539. See 
Aesculapius, Dionysos, Nas- 
atya. 

Hearn, Lafcadio, 279. 

Heaven, 47 f., 57, 62, 77, 88, 90, 
96, 100, 105; and Earth, 228; 
as God, 233, 378; in Zoroas- 



6o8 



INDEX 



trianism, 394 f . ; seven heavens 
and hells, 467. See Eschatol- 
ogy, Paradise. 

Hebe, 488. 

Hebrews, 65, 343, 358, 361, 366, 
595; language of, 440. 

Hegira, hijra, 454 f. 

Hel, 154, 161, 164. 

Helen, 487. 

Hell, 47 f ., 57, 62, 'jy, 88, 90, 96 f . ; 
Lithuanian, 144; Chinese, 247; 
Japanese, 2T] ; Egyptian, 
329 f. ; Babylonian, under- 
world, 348; Hebrew, 426; 
Zoroastrian, 395 f . ; Moham- 
medan, 466 f.; Greek, 502, 507; 
Christian, 581. See Hades, 
Mandaeans, Sheol, Yama. 

Henry, King, 587. 

Henno, 159. 

Hepatoscopy, 361. 

Hephaistos, 486. 

Hera, 487! 

Heraclitus, 510. 

Hercules, 353, 526, 539; Magus- 
anus, 163, 550. 

Heresy, 565. See Noetian, Sa- 
bellian, Patripassian, Unitar- 
ian, etc. 

Hermes, 484, 486 f., 503. 

Hero-cult, no, 495. See Cul- 
ture-hero. 

Herod, 445. 

Herodotus, 36, 316, 318, 331, 389, 
501. 

Hesiod, 492, 497 f. 

Hestia, 486, 523. See Vesta. 

Hewitt, J. R, 15. 

Hezekiah, 423 f. 

Hierodoulai, temple-slaves, wives 
of gods, 2;^, 366, 425. 

High Places, 424. See Moun- 
tain. 

Hilary, 574. 

Hillel, school of, 446, 449. 

Hinayana, see Buddhism. 

Hirth, F., 225 f., 229. 

Hittites, 345 f-, 348, 439- 

Hionen-tsang, 267. 

Holiness, law of, 434. 



Hom, haoma, 171, 383 f ., 385, 411. 
See Soma. 

Homer, 9, 228, 486 f., 490, 494, 
498, 507. 

Honover, prayer, 401. 

Homoousian, of same nature, 
565 f. 

Hopi, 92. 

Hopkins, Samuel, 574. 

Horace, -2^, 44. 

Horse, sacrifice of, 56, 127; In- 
die, 176; divination by, 153; 
-shoe arch, 423; Roman Octo- 
ber horse, 519, 527. 

Horus, hawk and sun, 314 f ., 320, 
Z22 ; eye of, 326. 

Hosea, 432 f., 441. 

Hosein, 474! 

Hospitality, 365. 

Hosso sect, 293. 

Hottentots, 24. 

House, parts of, deified, 244.. 

Huacas, 112, 114. 

Huang-Ti, 225. 

Huguenots, 590. 

Huns, Brynhild's husband a 
Hun, 150; and Chinese, 226, 
239- 

Hurakan, wind-god, hurricane, 
97. 

Hurgronje, C. S., 481. 

Husband, R. W., 533. 

Huss, 584. 

Hybris, 492. 

Hygeia, .S39- 

Hyksos, 313. 

Hymns, see Gathas, Song. 

Hyperdoulia. doulia, 580. 

Hypostasis of divinity, 428, 439. 

Hystaspes, Vishtaspa, Z7Z' 



lamblichus, 511. 

Iblis, 463 f . See Satan. 

Ibn Ezra, 448. 

Ideas, powers, 440; of Plato, 

503 f • 
Idols, images, of savages, 20, 27, 
34, 41 f., 60, 64, 76, 80, 97, 
109, 580; Celtic, 124; Slavic, 



INDEX 



609 



144 f.; Teutonic, 151; Puranic, 
217; cf. 220; Chinese tablets, 
247; Japanese idols, 284; He- 
brew images in temple, 437; 
Mohammedan, 463, 4^9 5 
Greek, 490, 510. See Saidas, 
Shedu. 

Idzumo, 283. 

leyasLi, 301, 304. 

Igigi, 349- 

Ignatius, 559. 575 ; Loyola, 577. 

Ijma, 476 f., 480. 

Ikhnaton, 334 f- 

Illapa, light-god, 114. 

Illusion, cosmic power, 178, 213. 

Images, see Idols. 

Imam, 480, 482. 

Immaculate conception, of Zoro- 
aster, 396; of Jesus, 579. See 
Virgin Birth. 

Immanence of God, 460; Stoic, 
542; Gnostic, 564. See Ve- 
danta. 

Immortality, not in gods, 105; 
religion of (Chinese), 272; 
Ameretat, 384; hope of, 406; 
Greek hope, 503. 

Inari, 283. 

Incas, 108 f., Iiof. 

Incense, 105 ; in China, 241 ; 
Greek use of, 346; Christian, 
510, 546. 

Incest, 71, III. 

India, 9, 12, 18, 88, 131 ; religion 
of, 170 f.; missionary to, 564. 

Indigitamenta, 4^7, 530. 

Indra, like Woden a Wanderer, 
157, 160; cult of, 172 f. ; heaven 
of, 175 ; wife of, 523 ; in Japan, 
388; Zoroastrian god, 388. 
See Andros. 

Infanticide, 456, 469. 

Initiation-rite, 34, 85, 116. 

Inquisition, Peruvian, 118; Ro- 
man Catholic, 578. 

Inspiration, 456. 

Intolerance, in China, 22^, 266, 
514; in Japan, 300, 305; Mo- 
hammedan, 458, 481 ; Greek, 
504, 514 ; Roman, 547 f. ; 565 i ; 



Christian, 590, 592. See In- 
quisition. 

Intoxicants, religious use of, 97, 
no, 115; sake, 49; octli, 99; 
soma, 171 ; milk for wine, 537. 
See Ralobit-gods. 

Irenaeus, 562 f., 564, 5^6, 570, 
575. 

Irmm, 155. 

Isaiah, 428, 430, 432 f ., 438, 441, 

443- 

Ise, 281 f . ; Ise-o-harai, 282. 

Ishtar, 325, 346, 348, 358, 422; 
daughter of moon-god, 361. 

Isis, 320 f., 326, 364; in Greece, 
509; in Rome, 539, 541; Ger- 
man form, 151. 

Islam, resignation, 457. See 
Mohammedanism. 

Ismailites, 480. 

Israel, children of, 413; four 
tribes, 420; serpent-worship 
of, 315; desolated, 421. See 
Hebrews. 

Itzamma, 95'. 

Iza-nagi, -nami, 280, 301. 

Jabarites, 476. 

Jabneh, 446. 

Jackson, A. V. W., 413. 

Jacob, of Babylon, 367. 

Jacobi, H., 184. 

Jains, 180 f. 

Jansen, Jansenists, 578. 

Janus, 518, 523, 526. 

Japan, religion of, 275 f . ; and 
China, 285, 288; families of, 
285, 291 f. ; patriots of, 286 f. 

Jastrow, Morris, Jr., 10, 44, 353, 
361. 

Jatakas, 195, 198. 

Jehovah, see Yahweh. 

Jeremiah, 425 f ., 429 f ., 432 f., 

434 f . ; 441. 

Jerome, 572 f . 

Jerusalem, Jebus, 424, 430 f ., 432. 

Jesuits, 578, 582; Japanese sect, 

294; in Japan, 304. 
Jesus, 454, 552. 
Jevons, Dr. F. B., 18, 74. 



6io 



INDEX 



Jews, in China, 272; and Bab- 
ylonian festival, 362 ; and Mo- 
hammed, 455, 462; and Rome, 
547. See Hebrews, Israel. 

Jimmu, Jingo, 276, 281. 

J inns, 365, 452 f., 456, 463, 472 f. 

Jishidzmne, 279. 

Job, 443, 462. 

Jodo sect, 292, 296 f . 

John, as author of fourth gos- 
pel, 533, 556; of Damascus, 
568, 571, 575. 

Josaphat, St., form of Buddha, 
580. 

Joseph, 316, 342, 428. 

Josephus, 437, 446. 

Josiah, 423, 426, 434. 

Joten, see Giants. 

Judah, 424 f . 

Judaism and Zoroastrianism, 
390, 406. 

Judgment, Day of, 386, 393. 

Julian, Apostate, 412, 550. 

Juno, 487, 522, 526. 

Jupiter, Feretrius, 461, 516; op- 
timus, 520 ; Vediovis, 523 ; 
Dolichenus, etc., 540; priestess 
of, 518; Celtic forms of, 122 f. 
See Dyaus. 

Justification, 587. 

Justin, Martyr, 560, 564 f-, 572, 
580, 582. 

Ka, 311, ZV. y^Z- 

Kaabah, 452. 

Kabbala, Cabalah, 428, 449. 

Kadar, Kadarites, 476. 

Kaira Kan, 54. 

Kali, 61, 207. 

Kama, Desire, love, god, cosmic 

principle, 185, 207. 
Kami, Kamui, powers, gods, 

47 f . ; -dama, 284 ; -no-michi, 

276 f., 281. 
Kamlamie, acting the Shaman, 

56. 
Karaites, 448. 
Karakia, 63 f., 72. 
Karma, 2, 177, 184 f., ingwa, 

293. 



Kashyapa, in China, 271. 

Kegon sect, 293. 

Keith, A. B., 176. 

Kekrops, 21. 

Kennedy, J., 196. 

Keres, 496. 

Khani, western Semitic god, 367 

Kharejites, 474. 

Khensu, 320. 

Khojas, 480. 

Khshathra Vairya, 383, 385. 

King, taboo of, 71 f . ; Celtic, as 
priest, 135, 117 f.; Egyptian, 
331 ; deified in Babylon, 345, 
365; king-killing, 362. See 
Balder, Osiris. 

King, Chinese Canon, 224. 

Kingu, 350 f. 

Kingsley, Mary H., 30. 

Kioto sects, 292. 

Kirke as hawk, 133. 

Kiyas, 476. 

Knights Templar, 577. 

Knots, 70, 464, 517. 

Kobalts, 146. 

Kobo, 294. 

Kojiki, 275 f., 280. 

Kolarians, 170 f., 175. 

Koran, 452 f., 456, 476. 

Kore, 488, 538; American form, 
99. 

Korea, 275 f., 288. 

Koreish, 454 f., 474. 

Kra, 30 f. 

Kretschmer, P., 364. 

Krishna, 174, 209 f. 

Kuannon, Kuanyin, 270, 299. 

Kublai Khan, 267. 

Kukulkan, 95. 

Kultur of ancient Germans, 149. 

Kuloskap, 83. 

Kurcha, Gurcha, 142. 

Lacouperie, Terriende, 226. 
Ladder, in grave, 145; to climb 

to gods, 329. 
Lagash, 344 f. 
Lake, worship of, iiof, 113; 

Paradise under, 132; Prussian, 

138; German, 167. 



INDEX 



6ii 



Lamp at shrine, 284. 

Lang, Andrew, 3. 

Langdon, S., 357. 3^3- 

Language of gods, 89. 

Lao-tse, 249 f., 258, 260, 265, 301. 

Lar, familiaris, 523; Lares, 

larvae, 525; of vicus, 546. 
Lay of the Harper, 311. 
Lectisternium, 540. 
Le Fevre. 588. 
Legate, last martyr, 592. 
Legge, James, 227, 229, 259. 
Lemuria, 527. 
Leo, the Great, 573. 
Ler, Lear, 133. 
Levites, 436; Peruvian form of, 

115- 

Lex talionis, 367, 417. 

Licius, Lieh-tse, 249, 254, 256. 

Lie-demon, 382 f ., 387 f ., 400. 

Life-elixir, 250. 

Light, as spirit or soul, 178; 
light-gods, 61, 114, 124, 172; 
God of light, 411; God as 
light, 563; feast of, see Chan- 
uka, Lykos. 

Lightning, as serpent, 82; as red 
man, 91 ; as female demon, 
115; -taboo, as lucky, 115, 160, 
517; Shiva as lightning-god, 
208; as dragon's sword, 279. 

Li-Ki, 224, 238. 

Lillooet bear-sacrifice, 51. 

Limbus, infantum, patrum, 581. 

Lingam, phallus, 207. 

Lion-sun, 317. 

Livy, 21. 

Llama-idols, 112. 

Lloyd, Arthur, 271. 

Logi, Loki, 154, 161. 

Logos, germ of, 343 ; doctrine, 
441. 510, 556; in Origen, 565. 

Loisy, A., 418, 430. 

Lollards, 584. 

Lombard, 575, 580. 

Longevity, 266. 

Lord of Being, 175; lords as 
Slavic gods, 42. 

Lorenzo de' Medici, 587. 

Lotus, see Buddhistic literature. 



Love, as African god, 32; Na- 
huan goddess, 99; in Bud- 
dhism, 190; in Empedocles, 
500; in China, 257, 259; love- 
feasts, in India, 220; in Egypt, 
342; Agape, 560, 570; Metho- 
dist, 592. See Aphrodite, 
Kama. 

Lucretius, 542. 

Lud, London, 134. See Lug. 

Ludi Romani, see Games. 

Lug, Lyons, 125, 130, 134 f. See 
Lud. 

Luke, gospel of, 533. 

Lung-Hen, 263. 

Lupercalia, wolf-warding rite, 
495. 528; Slavic form, 142. 

Lustration, of cattle, etc., 129, 
152, 282, 527, 545, 581. 

Luther, Martin, 297, 308, 581 f., 

585. 
Lyall, Sir Alfred, 3. 
Lykos, Lykeios, 487 f . 
Lyman, B. S., a Japanese god, 

302. 

Ma, 485, 539. 

Maat, 326. 

Maccabees, 444 f. 

Macedonius, Bishop, sect of, 568. 

Madhva, Hindu reformer, 214. 

Madonna, in India, 213; in 
Egj'pt, 343. See Mary. 

Magi, 375, 384, 402, 553. 

Magic, 16, 38, 42, 68, 77, 81, III ; 
Celtic, 127 f., 129, 133 ; Ger- 
man, 152; Indie, 174; Chinese, 
239 f., 266; Egyptian, 329, 331, 
340 f. ; Babylonian, 349 ; Medi- 
terranean, 483 ; Greek, 508 f . ; 
Roman, 517, 528; Christian, 
563, 581. 

Magna^ Mater, 412, 539. 

Mahavira, Vardhamana, Jain 
founder, 180 f. 

Mahayana, see Buddhism. 

Mahdi, 473. 

Maia, Maiestas, goddess, 5'38. 

Maimonides, Moses, 448. See 
Thomas Aquinas. 



6l2 



INDEX 



Maitreya, 192. 

Maize-goddess, see Grain-spirit. 

Malik, school of, 481 ; angel, 466, 
472. 

Mama Ocllo, ill, 113. 

Mana, power, 18, 35, 66 i.; 
Roman goddess, 538. 

Manco Capac, iii. 

Mandaeans, 410; their descent 
into hell, 559. 

Manes, 55, 172, 385; Di, 524. 
See Ancestors, Ghosts, Lares. 

Manetho, 312. 

Mani, Manes, Manichaeism, 
200, 267, 272, 410, 512, 571. 

Manito, 82 f ., 286. 

Mannhardt, W., 12, 153, 167. 

Mannus, German, primeval man, 
151 ; Manu, Hindu primeval 
man, 14, 174, 211. 

Marcion, 560, 570, 575. 

Marcus Aurelius, 548. 

Marduk, Amorite god of Baby- 
lon, 315, 346 f., 348 f.; as Jupi- 
ter, 360; festival of, 363. See 
Mordecai. 

Mariolatry and Artemis-cult, 
557; opposition to, 567, 572, 
579. 

Mark, gospel of, 533. 

Marriage, 30, 63, -taboo, 71 ; 
child-, 220. 

Mars, 516 f., 518 f.; and Moles, 
538 ; impious, 545 ; Celtic forms 
forms of, 122 f ., 127 ; as Ziu, 

155. 

Marti, K., 417. 

Martineau, J., 4. 

Martyrs, 565 ; prayers to, 580. 

Mary, mother of Jesus, in Mo- 
hammedanism, 454 f. ; see 
Mariolatry, Virgin ; Queen, 

591- 
Masai, 25. 

Masks, funeral, 92, 109, 117, 524. 
Mass, 563, 575. 
Massebas, 421, 425. See Phal- 

licism, Stone. 
Materialism, in China and India, 

262, 264. 



Matriarchy, matrilinear succes- 
sion, 141, 365 

Matthew, gospel of, 533. 

Mauss, M., 12. 

Mayas, 84 f. 

May-day, 129; May-pole, 166. 

Mazda, Mazdakas, 373, 384, 391; 
in China, 272. 

Mazdak, reformer, 410. 

Mecca, 453 f., 468, 473. 

Medes, 375, 389, 402. 

Mediator, Marduk as, 348; Mo- 
hammed, 467 ; Christian, 580. 

Medicine-men, 82, 84. See 
Priests, Wizards. 

Medina, Prince of, 458. 

Mediterranean culture, 16, 120, 
495 f . See Minoan. 

Megalesia, 529, 541, 556. 

Melanchthon, 585. 

Melech, Melek, Moloch, 365. 

Memphis, as religious centre, 
332. 

Mencius, 224, 249, 257 f., 262. 

Menes, 312. 

Mennonites, 584. 

Menzies, A., 18. 

Mercury, 489; Celtic and Ger- 
man forms, 122, 155. 

Merit, 586. 

Messiah, Messianic idea, Aztec, 
103 ; Egyptian, 337 ; Zoroas- 
trian, 396, 407 ; Hebraic, 441 f . ; 
Christian, 554. 

Metamorphosis, of animals, in 
China, 240, 243; of gods, 158, 
284. 

Metawile sect, 481. 

Metempsychosis, 21, 131 f., 147, 
165, 170, 184, 261, 329, 448 f., 
467, 502, 505. 

Methodists, 591 f. 

Meyer, E., 409. 

Mexican religion, 64, 94 f . 

Mia, 281. 

Michabo, 83 f., 87. 

Mictlan, 97. 

Migration of culture, 15 f., 64, 
76, 94, 108, 115, 122, 272. 

Mihrab, 423. 



INDEX 



613 



Mih Ti, Moh, 257, 260. 

Mikado, 277 f., 281, 283 f., 286. 

Millerites, 576. 

Mills, L., 408 f. 

Milk, sea of, 56; Milky Way, 
125, 394. 

Mimir, 157, 159. 

Minerva, 523, 526; Celtic form 
of, 122 f., 131. 

Alinoan culture, 483, 517. 

Minotaur, Indie, 174. 

Miracles, 555, 580. 

Mirror, of fire-god, 102, 114; of 
Aztec sun-god, 103; of Japa- 
nese sun-goddess, 281 f. 

Mishnah, 447. 

Missions, 510, 567. 

Mitanni, 388. 

Mithra, Mitra, 172, 385, 404, 
410 f., glory of, 396, 540; and 
Christianity, 548, 581. 

Mixcoatl, 103. 

Mohammed, 42, 452 f. ; Moham- 
medanism in India, 2i5f. ; in 
China, 272; and Jewish relig- 
ion, 449, 471; sects and 
schools, 481 ; parallels, 460 f. 

Monasteries, 290; of Eastern 
Church, 569 ; in the West, 576 ; 
Egyptian origin of, 576. 

Monergism, 574. 

Mongols in China, 2^7; Mongo- 
lian influence, 229, 275. 

Monism, Chinese, 263. See 
Upanishads, Vedanta. 

Monotheism, in India, 213, 216, 
475; Chinese, 229; Egyptian, 
ZZZ f-j 342 ; tendency toward, 
Babylon, 349, 364; Hebraic, 
428, 431; Greek, 497, 500; 
Mithraic, 548. 

Montanus, 533, 561, 583. 

Months, sacred to spirits and 
gods, 384. 

Moon, 29, 109 f., 112, 114; as 
birth-god, 99; cult of, Slavic, 
139; German, 151 f-, I54; 
menu, 142 ; -plant, 385; in 
China, Japan, 244, 280; 
Babylon, lord of knowledge. 



320, 345, 361 ; in Tyre and Si- 
don, 422; and Sabbath, 362, 
425; Zoroastrian cult of, 383; 
Greek, 488. See Sin, Soma. 
Zodiac. 

Moravians, 584, 591. 

Mordecai, 362, 450. 

Morrison, W. D., 446. 

Moses, 359, 41S, 418, 440, 557; 
code of, 368, 426, 435 f . ; 
burned his tongue, 462 ; second 
and third, see Maimonides. 

Mother-goddess, 34, 124, 149; 
Dravidian, 170; of life, Semi- 
tic, 346, 421, 483 f., 494; Ma- 
tralia, 529; Magna Mater, 366; 
Mothers' Night, 132, 153; 
Mother of God, 579 f. 

Mothers as demons, Aztec, 
Hindu, IDS, 207; Mothers of 
Letts, 140 f. 

Moulton, J. H., 402. 

Mountain, god of, thunder of, 
dance to, 100, 114; Shiva as, 
208; Enlil, 348; Zafa, Marwa, 
452 ; hills as holy, 421 ; as 
clouds, 461; hold down earth, 
465. 

Mourning, 21, 30, 33, 49, 89; 
cause of, 240; in Japan, 278, 

359, 365. 

Miiller, Max, 5. 

Mummification, see embalming. 

Murray, G., 508. 

Muses, 486; lymph and nymph, 
528. 

Music, 30, 34, 78, 92; in Chinese 
cult, 231, 235; Hebraic, 437: 
See Hymns, Song. 

Mut, 320 f. 

Mutazilites, 475, 477. 

Mysteries, 20 f., 26, 60, 64, 87, 
92, 172 ; Greek, 346, 498, 502 f . 

Mysticism, Vedic, 178; erotic, 
212 f., 366; Japanese, 300; un- 
Semitic, 448; late Mohamme- 
dan, 475, 478 f.; Greek, 483; 
Roman, 540, 544; Mediter- 
ranean, 595; sensuous Chris- 
tian, 569, 591. 



6i4 



INDEX 



Nabi, 429. 

Nabonidus, 344 f.; daughter of, 
366. 

Nabu, Nebo, 347 f . ; as Mercury, 
360. 

Nagarjuna, 199. 

Naiku shrine, 282. 

Name, in baptism, 48, 65; hypo- 
stasis of, 70; taboo of, 71, 240; 
of God, concealed, 71 ; Holy 
Name of Sikhs, 219; mean 
names, 240; power of, 351, 
581. 

Nannar, 348. 

Nara sects, 281, 292 f. 

Narada, 388. 

Naram-Sin, 344 f.; horns of, 361. 

Narayana, 211. 

Nasatya, Healer, Naonhaithya, 
385, 388. 

Nassau, R. H., 14, 36. 

Naturism, 31 f., 59!, 76 f., 79, 
90, 107, 139, 170 f., 236 f., 278, 
376, 423, 462, 478, 486, 523. 

Naville, E., 428. 

Necessity, as divinity, 501. 

Necromancy, 359. See Oracles. 

Nebuchadrezzar, 347, 434. 

Neeshima, school of, 307. 

Nehemiah, 434 f., 443. 

Nemetona, 133. 

Neo-Confucianism, 265, 304. 

Neolithic man, 8. 

Neo-Platonism, 441 f., 449, 479, 
511, 571. 

Nephthys, 327, 339. 

Neptunus, 524, 529. 

Nergal, 348 f . ; as Mars, 360 ; fes- 
tival of, 363. 

Nero, 547, 565. 

Nerthus, 151. 

Nestorius, 567; Nestorians in 
China, 267, 2^2, 298 ; Nestorian 
monument, 2'12> \ and Moham- 
medans, 475. 
New Hollanders, 20. 
New Year, 130, 450; Roman, 

529. 
Nicean theology, 571. See 
Creed. 



Nichiren, 292, 294, 299. 

Nicolaitans, 364. 

Nihongi, 275. 

Nimrod, epic of, 353, 369. 

Nineveh, 347 ; Ishtar of, 348. 

Nin-deities, 345, 347; Ninib as 
Saturn, 360. 

Nirgrantha sect, 180. 

Nirvana, 185, 192, 194. 

Nisaba, Western Semitic pa- 
tron of Code, 367. 

Nixies, 166. 

Nobunaga, 291, 303 f. 

Noetian heresy, 565. 

Nominalists, 578. 

Norito, 283. 

Norns, 163, 165. 

Nous, Reason (q. v.) as divinity, 
501, 505, 506, 508, 548. 

Nuada, Nudd, 133 f., 156. 

Numa, 517, 530, 535. 

Numbers, Pythagorean, 500 ; 
lucky, 517; three, Z2>^ 140, I73. 
239, 241, 486; four, 86, 96, 241, 
383; rivers, 105, 356; Chinese 
fives, 264; seven, Brahmanic, 
Semitic, zz^ 54, 362; 411, 462, 
467, 508; eight. Buddhistic, 
280; and Mohammedan, 466; 
thirty-three gods, 385 ; seventy- 
one or more sects, 481. See 
Triad. 

Numina, 489, 518, 523; Slavic, 
139 f . ; Teutonic, 164. See 
Functional gods. 

Nusairiah sect, 478. 

Oath, by thigh, 68; by tree, 166; 
by genius, 523. 

Obeah magic cult, 30, 40. 

Occam, 579. 

Odhin, 156, 160. See Woden, 

Offerings, of jewellery and in- 
cense, no; to gods and Manes, 
175; called Great, in Japan, 
279; Hebrew, 436. See Sacri- 
fice. 

Ogma, 131, 133. 

Ohoharahi, 282. 

Oldenberg, H., 183 f. 



INDEX 



6iS 



Omar, 453, 463. 

Omayyads, 474 f- 

One-eyed god, Cyclops, 100, 158. 

Ontology, 579. 

Ops, Consus, 523, 527, 

Opus operatum, 582. 

Oracles, Mayan, 98 ; from caves, 

114; tree-, 127; grave-, 132; 

from dead, 359 ; Egyptian, 329 ; 

ark as, 417; law-giving, 429; 

Greek, 494, 501, 513; Roman, 

533 ; of Sibyl, 531. See Divin- 
ation, Osiris. 
Ordeals, 26, 34, 39, 49, 152. 
Orcus, 524. 
Order, Holy, 376 f. See Rita, 

Tao. 
Origen, 564 f ., 572, 575, 580 f. 
Ormuzd, Ahura Mazda, 373, 377, 

402. 
Orphism, 494 f., 497, 499, 502, 

504 f. 
Osiris, 161, 311, 318, 320 f., 322 f., 

325, 339 f., 364, 556 f. 
Ossian, 123, 136. 
Othman, 474. 
Ouranos, 27. 
Ovid, 547. 
Oyomei school, 304. 

Pachacamac, 113. 

Pagoda, in China, 267. 

Pairika, Peri, 388. 

Pakht, 317. 

Pales, Parilia, 545. 

Palestine, and Egypt, 313, 332; 
and Babylon, 347 f ,, 366 f . 

Pali, 199. 

Pan, 486 f., 503; in India, 212. 

Panaetius, 542 f. 

Pantaenus, 564. 

Pantheism, 213; Egyptian, 333 f . ; 
Orphic, 497, 504. 

Paradise, American, 88; of 
Tlaloc, 105; Babylonian, 356; 
of India and Iran, 396; He- 
braic, 419; Mohammedan, 459, 
465 f. 

Parents, religiously strangled, 
63; Parentalia, 524, 528. 



Parjanya, 138; American par- 
allel, 100. 
Parsis, 391, 410. 
Passover, 417, 420, 425, 436. 
Patagonians, 20, 75, 108, no. 
Patriarchs, of Bible, 418, 426 f . ; 

of Eastern Church, 569. 
Patrick, St., 567. 
Patripassian heresy, 565. 
Paul, St., 510, 548, 552 f., 555 f., 

575» 582; as Gnostic, 563; Acts 

of, 580; of Samosata, 565. 
Pax, Dei, no; 530; Romana, 546. 
Pelagius, 214, 567, 57i f-, 574- 
Pelasgians, 483 f. 
Penates, 50, 523, 547 ; Slavic, 146. 
Pentateuch, 368, 419 f., 426 f. 
Pentecost, 425, 434, 436. 
Perkunas, 138 f., 140. 
Persecution, see Intolerance. 
Persephone, 485, 488, 494. 
Peru, religion of, 108 f. 
Pessimism, 481, 507. 
Peter, St., 553, 559, 562, 572; 

Hermit, 584. 
Petrie, W. Flinders, 342. 
Pfleiderer, O., 4, 18. 
Phallicism, 24, 26, 42, 60, 79; 

Slavic, 144; Teutonic, 162; 

Indie, 207, 209; Chinese, 246; 

Japanese, 283; Roman, 538. 
Pharisees, 442, 444 f., 451. 
Pharaoh, 313, 321, 332. 
Phenomenal gods. See Natur- 

ism. 
Philaret, 569. 
Philistines, 332, 420, 424. 
Philo Judaeus, 376, 441, 51 1, 556. 
Philosophy in religion, 172, 334; 

Jewish, 449 ; Greek, 499 f . ; 

Roman, 541. See Vedanta, 

Yang. 
Phoenicians, 420 f., 422, 426. 
Phoenix, Chinese, 269; Egyptian, 

318. 
Pied Piper, Celtic myth, 133. 
Pietists of Germany, 591. 
Pig, taboo of, 70; divinity of, 

126, 151; sacrifice of, 170; boar 

of Shiva, 207; in China, 242; 



6i6 



INDEX 



in Egypt, 318; in Greece, 
494 f ., 496 ; in Rome, 537. See 
Boar, Suovitaurilia. 
Pilgrimage, no, 116, 315; Hajj, 

473. 

Pindar, religion of, 503. 

Pitakas, 197 f. 

Planets, 114, 244. See Astrology, 

Plato, 3, 376, 503, 509. 

Plautus, 541. 

Pleiades, 114. 

Plotinus, 511, 564. 

Plutarch, 327, zi^^ Z^\U 407. 
548. 

Pluto, 539- 

Polycarp, 573. 

Polygamy, 4:^0, 456. 

Polynesian gods, 60 f. 

Polytheism, in Israel, 424. See 
Gods, Monotheism. 

Pompey, 445. 

Pontifex, 523, 530 f., 534, 543. 

Poorah, 36. 

Pope, 305, 569, 577; as head of 
Church, 572; two, 577; papal 
power, 586; Victor, 570; Pius 
V, 580; Pius IX, 579, Alexan- 
der VI, 585. 

Porphyry, 511. 

Poseidon, 484 f., 487. 

Prayer, 79 f., 85, %7, 91 ; Aztec 
and Peruvian, 107; German, 
to dead, 164; in Japan, 278, 
283 f . ; -wheel, 295 ; Babylon- 
ian, 349; Mohammedan, 468; 
Greek, 490 ; Christian, 569, 575, 
580. See Honover. 

Predestination, 571, 590. 

Pre-logical magic, 13, 21. 

Priests, 38, 63 f. ; of America, 84, 
no; Aztec, 103, 106; Peruvian, 
115; as ruler, 97; chief as 
priest or god, 117; Celtic, 127, 
136; Slavic, 140, 144; German, 
150 ; Indie, Avestan, 171 f ., 222, 
404; Chinese, 246, 267; Shinto, 
283; Egyptian, 330 f. ; Bab- 
ylonian, 366 ; Hebrew, 424, 436 ; 
Greek, 490; Roman, 529; 
Priestly Code, 428 f., 434 f. 



Prophets, 419, 425 f., 429 f., 435. 

See Mohammed. 
Propitiation-service, 283. 
Protestant theology, 585, 587. 
Prussian savages, 138. 
Psalms, Babylonian, 363, 368; 

Jewish, 443. See Gathas. 
Psychology in Buddhism, 188. 
Ptah, 310, 316, 320, 324. 
Puja, 43- 

Puranas, 217 f., 276. 
Purdah, 469. 

Purgation, see Purification. 
Purgatory, American, 88; Zoro- 

astrian, 395; Jewish, 443; 

Christian, 581. 
Purification, 40, purgation, 86, 

97, Z^Z\ by washing, 404; by 

fire, 527 ; Greek, 491 ; Sabbath, 

362. See Taboo, Washing. 
Purim, 362, 450. 
Puritans, 591 f. 
Pygmies, 20, 24. 
Pyramids, 313, 322. 
Pythagoras, 494, 499 f., 503, 542. 

Quakers, 591 f . ; of Japan, 295. 
Quarters, sacrifice to four, 241, 

244; gods of in Egypt, 320. 

See Directions, Winds. 
Queensland, 20. 
Quetzalcoatl, 95 f., 102 f. 
Quipu, 108. 
Quirinus, 516, 520. 

Rabbit-gods, 90, 99. 

Radha, mistress of Krishna, 

215- 

Rainbow, 32; bridge, 394; god- 
dess of birth, 95 ; of women, 
109; as god, 100; servant of 
sun and moon, 112; causes 
dumbness, 114. 

Rain-making gods, 140. 

Ram, of Tiu, 156; Chinese sac- 
rifice of, 242; Egyptian ha, 

317. 
Rama, 174, 209 f. ; Ramanand, 
214, Rlmanuja, 213; Rama 
sects, 215. 



INDEX 



617 



Rama-Krishna, 222. 

Ramadhan, fast, 468, 473. 

Rammon, Rimmon, 346, 422. 

Ransom, see Redemption. 

Realists, 578. 

ReCRa), Sun-god, 314 f-, 320 f., 
323 f.; full-form, 316. 

Reason as Divinity, Chinese, 
263, 265 ; Greek, See Nous. 

Rechabites, 417, 430. 

Redemption, 562 ; ransom paid to 
Satan, 565, 575; other views 
of, 569, 572 f. ; particular, 590. 

Reformers, 582, 584 f . ; English 
Reformation, 591. 

Regeneration, savage, 84; by 
baptism, 86; see Christian re- 
ligion, 

Reinach, S., 42. 

Reincarnation, 89. See Metem- 
psychosis. 

Religion, as fear, 3; as a sacred 
tree, 60; tribal, 364. See 
Definitions, Sebas. 

Repentance, useless, 242; 390 f. 

Resurrection, 62, 115; Celtic, 
132; Indie, 175; Egyptian, 340; 
Zoroastrian and Christian, 406, 
408; Hebrew, 442; Moham- 
medan, 454, 457, 462 f., 468; 
Greek, 506; of Attis, 556. 

Reville, A., 4 f ., 10, 18. 

Rhadamanthus, 3:^2, 386, 502. 

Ridge way, W., 176, 484, 502. 

Rigantona, 129, 131. 

Rig Veda, 172 f. 

Right Order, 248. See Rita, 
Tao. 

Rimac, Lima, murmur, of oracle, 
114. 

Risley, Sir Herbert, 19. 

Rita, Right (Order), 248, 326. 

Ritsu sect, 293. 

Ritual, Chinese, 238; Roman, 

^545- 

Rivers, 60; of hell, 33, 96, 105; 
four of Aztec Paradise, 105; 
cult of, Celtic, 125; Chinese, 
231 f., 234; Greek, 486; Roman, 
538; of Eden, 356. 



Rome, Roman, religion, 516 f. 
Holy Roman Empire, 583; and 
Palestine, 445 ; Church of, 
562 f ., 565 1, 570, 572. 

Rosary, prototype of, 64; Indie 
origin of, 207 ; Japanese and 
Mohammedan adoption of, 298, 
481. 

Rudra, 205, 208, 385. 

Runes, 158. 



Saadia, 449, 467. 

Sabaoth, lord of, battle hosts, 
425. 

Sabazios, Zeus, 509. 

Sabbath, 362, 415, 420, 438, 461. 

Sabellian heresy, 565. 

Sabitu, 354. 

Sacer, holy, accursed, 531. 

Sacraments, 581. 

Sacrifice, savage, 11, 30, 32, 56, 
60, 64, 87 ; smoke-, 85 ; -straw, 
91; Mayan, 96 f., 100; Aryan, 
barhis, 171 ; human, Aztec, 102, 
104; S. American, no f., Greek, 
421, 491; foundation, 116, 426; 
Celtic, 127 f.; German, 151 f., 
157; beer-, 172; for divination, 
144; Chinese, 231, 239, 141; 
cost, 242 ; Japanese, 278 f ., 280, 
289 ; Egyptian, 331 f. ; Semitic, 
349, 365. 413, 421, 426, 436, 459, 
469, 478; Zoroastrian, 404; 
Roman, 534; vicarious, 492. 
See Communion, Offerings, 
Scape-goat. 

Sadducees, 436, 443 f., 451, 554. 

Sahajiya sect, 202. 

Saicho, Dengyo, 293. 

Saidas, 43. 

Saints, Mohammedan, 479; gods 
as, 510, 545; veneration of, 
572; intercession of, 580; per- 
severance of, 590. 

Sake, 275. See Intoxicants. 

Salii, 34, 518. 

Saliva, power of, 34, 92. 

Salvation, 563, 565 ; Salvationists, 
593. 



6i8 



INDEX 



Samajas, 219 f. 

Samaria, 420, 422, 430; Samari- 
tans, 443 f. 

Samhain, 130. 

Samoyeds, 18. 

Samson, 353. 

Samuel, parallel to, 355, 429, 442. 

Samurai, 286; visit the Pope, 305. 

Sanhedrin, 446 f. 

Sankarshana, 210 f. 

Sankhya, dualistic system, 179, 
184, 207. 

Sanron sect, 293. 

Saoshyant, saviour, 375, 395; as 
Zoroaster, 396, 407. 

Sargon, 344 f., 424, 433, 557. 

Sassanides, Sassanians, 386, 398, 
406; and Mohammedans, 475- 

Satan, 33, 50; Erlik, 54; not 
named, 71 ; evil deity in Peru, 
117; in Egypt, 321; in Avesta, 
409 ; Hebrew, 438 f . ; Christian, 
564!., 575. See (Mara) Death, 
Iblis. 

Saturnus, 523, 527 f-, 537, 545; 
Saturnalia, 450. 

Saussaye, C. de la, 43. 

Saviour, in Japan, 298; in 
Avesta, see Saoshyant; Aescu- 
lapius, 559; Christ, ibid. 

Savonarola, 584. 

Sayce, A. H., 315, 325, 352. 

Saxneat, 155. 

Scape-goat sacrifice, 65 ; Chinese, 
244; Japanese, 280, 283; He- 
braic, 417; Greek, 491; Roman, 

537. 
Schleiermacher, R, 4. 
Scotus Erigena, 578. 
Scribes, 435 f ., 446 f. 
Sea as god, 24, no, 112, 133; 

579; sea-spirits, 166. 
Seasons, deified, 244. 
Sebas, religion as fear, 3, 7. 
Sebek, 318. 
Sects, Indie, 179, 203; reforming, 

205 f., 219 f . ; Mohammedan, 

481 ; Christian, 593. See Don- 

atus, Macedonius, etc. 
Secret Societies, see Mysteries. 



Sedna, 77. 

Self as soul and All-soul, At- 
man, 178. 

Semi-Arians,-Pelagians, 568, 574. 

Semites, religion of, 420 f ; cul- 
ture, 16; connexion with 
Egypt, 332, 343; contrast with 
Aryans, 365. See Babylon, 
Hebrew, etc. 

Sen, Keshub Chunder, 219. 

Seneca, 3, 548, 552. 

Sennacherib, 347, 424, 433. 

Sensuality, see Mysticism, Phal- 
licism. 

Septuagint, 440. 

Seraph, 422, 439. 

Serapis, 316 f. 

Serpent, 32, 82, 90, 112; plumed, 
92; bird-, 93, 95 f.; lightning 
as, 109 ; belief of Celts, 127 ; 
Slavs, 139, 142 f . ; India, 170, 
209; the Midhgardh-snake, 
154; Chinese, 246; Egyptian, 
314; Hebrew, 415 f- 1 Greek, 
486, 494; and eagle, 360; and 
Aesculapius, 537. See Back- 
bone, Dragon. 

Servetus, 585, 589. 

Set, 318, 321, 326, 339! 

Sex as religious element, 34, 61, 
68, 422; goddess of, 99; sex- 
duaHsm, 366. See Ashera, 
Mysticism, Phallicism, Sen- 
suality, Shakti. 

Shabatum, 362. 

Shadow, soul, 32, 88, 105, 245; 
shadow-land, 115. 

Shafiites, 481. 

Shakti, 208, 217. 

Shaman, Shamanism, 22, 53 f. ; 
Polynesian, 65 ; Eskimo, 78 ; 
Zoroastrian, 402 ; Hebraic, 433. 

Shamash, 345, 348, 360 f., 363, 
367; Joshua the Bel-Shamite, 
424; horses of, 424. 

Shammai, school of, 446. 

Shang Ti, Supreme Lord, God, 
231 f., 235 f., 262. 

Shankara, monist, 208. 

Sharraph, god, 422. 



INDEX 



619 



Shechem, Lord of, 417, 423; 
Gerizim, 443. 

Shedu, 44. 

Shema, 447, 

Sheol, 359, 442. See Hell. 

Shiahs, Shiites, 474, 478, 480 f. 

Shin, Shinron, sect, 292, 297. 

Shingakuha, Japanese heart- 
culture sect, 301. 

Shi King, 224. 

Shingon sect, 294. 

Shinto, not originally ancestor- 
cult, 276 f . ; pure and mixed, 
Ryobu, 286 f , ; as monotheism, 
306. See Tao. 

Shirk, heresy of, 454. 

Shishak, king, 313, 424. 

Shiva, fertility-god, originally 
storm and lightning, 174 f. ; as 
man, 161, 176; mothers of, 
105 ; children of, 379 ; sects of, 
205, 209. 

Shotoku, Prince, 285, 288, 292. 

Shu, Chinese classics, 224; Shu 
King, 276. 

Shushi school, 265, 304. 

Shvetambara (white-garment), 
sect of Jains, 181. 

Sibyl, 531, 536, 538 f., 543. See 
Oracles. 

Sikhs, hybrid religion of, 215, 
219. 

Silvanus, 523, 545. 

Simon Magus, 563. 

Sin (moon-god), 248 f., 415; 
Sin, Shamash, and Ishtar, 

.361- 

Sin, evil and wickedness, 507, 
558, 564, 571, 573; origin of 
evil, 563. 

Sing Li, 264. 

Sinism, traits of, 245. 

Sirens, 496. 

Skanda, war-god, 207. 

Sky-god, Slavic, 141 ; German, 
155 f.; Indie, 172; Chinese, 
228 f., 236; Greek, 483. 

Slavs, Slavic religion, 138 f . 

Smith, E. G., 15, 310; Robert- 
son, 12. 



Smith-gods, 133 ; Wayland, 
152. See Hephaistos. 

Smoke-sacrihce, 85, 92. 

Sneeze, may expel soul, 32. 

Socmus, Socinianism, 567, 588. 

Socrates, 503. 

Soederblom, N., 407 f. 

Sokaris, 330. 

Sol Invictus, 539, 548. 

Solomon, 424, 440; ring of, 462. 

Solon, 501. 

Solstice-rite, 92, 175. 

Soma, plant and moon, 171. See 
Horn, Intoxicants. 

Song, hymns to gods, in Peru, 
118; India, see Veda; Babylon, 
349, 3^\3 ; of Solomon, 434. 
See Gathas, Music, Psalms. 

Sophia, see Wisdom. Sophists, 
500 f. 

Sophocles, religion of, 503. 

Sorcerer, 453. 

Soter, epithet of saviom- deities, 
559. 

Soul, savage belief, 8, 18, 21, 25, 
32, 34, 48, 51, 78, 87, 93, 121; 
as breath of heaven, 65 ; plur- 
ality of, 88 ; departing soul ar- 
rested, 240; Slavic belief, 145; 
etymology of word soul, 165 ; 
as follower, as self, 165, 177; 
as light, 178; Buddhistic, 188, 
193 ; Japanese conception, 
277 f . ; kvei and shen, 245 ; 
Egyptian ka, ba, etc., 311, 317, 
322, 327; Zoroastrian, ahu, 
daena, etc., 392; journey of, 
411 ; Hebrew breath and psyche 
443; in Plato, 503; and sin 
(q- v.), 573- 

Spells, carmina, 517. 

Spencer, H., 18, 29, 176; and 
Gillen, 17. 

Spener, P. J., 591. 

Spheres, seven, 411. 

Sphinx, 317. 

Spinoza, 579. 

Spirit, 30, 34 f., 48 f ., 55, 58, 7^ f ., 
80; guardian, 56, 81 ; language 
of, 89; group-spirits of Celts, 



620 



INDEX 



see Fairies, Mothers; Slavic, 
142; Chinese, 228, 243; Japa- 
nese, 277 f ., 279 ; Babylonian, 
349; Arabian, 365; Zoroas- 
trian, 378; Greek, 495, 503; 
evil, 378; and baptism, 558; 
Great Wise Spirit, 2>77 \ Holy 
Spirit, 566 ; as son of God, 561 ; 
as female, 568; origin of 
Heavenly Spirit, 461. 

Spring-festival, 366, 527. 

Srahman, Suhman, African 
gods, 30 f. 

Sraosha, Faith, 384. 

Stars, savage cult of, 96, 103, 
108, 112, 172, 564; Chinese cult 
of, 269; Japanese, 284; Egyp- 
tian, 322; Zoroastrian, 386, 
388; sacrifice to, 404; Greek, 
508; angels pelt with, 463. 
See Soul. 

State and religion, 533, 594. 

Stoics, 505 f., 511. 542 f. 

Stones, holy, circles, 9, 22, 43 f., 
60, 82, 90, 109 ; stone as sky, 
62, 411; litholatry before 
heliolatry, 113; in Peru, stone 
as home of Fire-god, 114; 
akmo, 142; boundary and 
guardian, 170; Egyptian, 314; 
Arabic, 365; black, 452, 540; 
Jupiter Silex, 521. See Akmo, 
Ark, Hermes, Phallicism, Mas- 
seba. 

Sufis, suj, 460, 479 f . 

Suicide, forbidden in Buddhism, 
180. 

Sukhavati, Happy Land, 198, 
297. 

Sulis, 123. 

Sulla, 543. 

Sultan as Caliph, 475. 

Sumerian culture, 344, 364. 

Sun, worship of, 79, 90, 109 f.; 
-dance, 91 f . ; Celtic, deasil, 
129, 133 ; Chinese deasil, 241 ; 
swinging with, 91, 141 ; horns 
of, 130; Holy Grail form of 
sun, 132; Cuchullin, 135; 
brother suns, 92; Aztec, 102; 



Peruvian, 113; son of sun, 
hi; servant of God, 113; 
Slavic cult, 139 f. ; Lithuanian, 
141, 146; Teutonic, 151!, 154; 
Indie, 172, 213; Japanese, 
276 f., 289, 306; Egyptian, 
314 f., 327; hymn to, 329, 
ZZZ f • ; Babylonian, 360 ; 
Roman, 540, 548; sun and 
queen of Sheba, 462. See 
Mithra, Sol, Vairocana, 
Vishnu. 

Sunna, (Right) Way, Orthodox, 
Sunnis, 474 f., 476 f., 478 f., 
481. 

Suovitaurilia, 527, 534. 

Supererogation, work of, 561. 

Superstition, outlasts religion, 
548. 

Supper, Last, 581. See Eu- 
charist, Love-feast. 

Supplicationes, Roman, prayer, 
entreaty, thanksgiving, 540. 

Suras, 456, 464, 

Suttee, suicide of widow, 30; 
116, 132. 

Svantovit, as St. Vitus, 144. 

Svarog, Sky-god, 141. 

Svastika (svasti, "is well"). 
107, 244. 

Sword-dance as worship, 43. 

Synagogue, 447. 

Synergism, 574. 

Synoptic Gospels, 552 f ., 556. 

Syria, dea, 539; Church of, 569. 

Tabernacle, 425; feast of, 432, 

536. 
Tablets, see Ancestors. 
Taboo, II, 25 ; of ground, 56 ; 

63, 67 f . ; Celtic ges^a, 135 ; 

-day, 361 ; Semitic, 417 ; of 

leaven, 420; Roman, 517. 
Tacitus, 9, 121, 138, 150 f. 
Tagore, Sir Rabindranath, 219. 
Tahioh, 224. 

Talisman, see Fetish, Charm. 
Talmud, 435, 447 f. 
Tamashi, soul as wind-ball, 278W 
Tamate, 60. 



INDEX 



621 



Tammuz, 354, 360, 363; Dumuzi, 

364; 422. 
Tanith, 539. 

Tantra, Tantrk cult, 201, 564. 
Tao, 238, 248, 250 f., 252, 326; 

Shen-tao, Shinto, 250, 276; 

later Taoism, 265 f. ; Tao Teh 

King, 249. 
Taranis and Teutates, 123, 125. 
Tartars, 239 f., 262, 272, 278. 
Tatian, 564. 
Tattoo, 49, 63; in Peru, 115; in 

China, 238; Semitic, 417. 
Tauroktonos, Mithra, see Bull. 
Taylor, H. O., 342. 
Temple, 26, 64; Mayan, 95, 97; 

Aztec, 103; Peruvian, 115; 

Celtic, 124; Slavic, 148; Indie, 

170; Chinese, 226; Japanese, 

281, 288 f.; Egyptian, 330 f.; 

Babylonian, 345, 366; Jewish, 

424 f ., 434 f . ; Greek, 492 ; 

Roman, 526, 533, 539, 546. 

See Pagoda, Teocalli, Tomb. 
Temptation, of Buddha, 195 ; of 

Zoroaster, 374, 403; of Jesus, 

556. 
Tenaim, 448. 
Tendai sect, 293. 
Tengu, Japanese spirit, 279. 
Tenri-kyo, 287. 
Teocalli, 105. 
Tera, 284, 288. 
Teraphim, 40, 361, 416. 
Tertullian, 412, 557, 561 f., 566, 

570; traducianism of, 573, 

580 f. 
Teutonic religion, 149 f. 
Tezcatlipoca, 99. 
Thanksgiving, see Gratitude. 
Theocritus, Adonis of, 364. 
Theodosius, Emperor, 530, 572. 
Theopompus, 407. 
Thesmophoria, 495. 
Theosophical Society, 220. 
Thomas Aquinas, 576, 578; and 

Maimonides, 449, 580. 
Thor, 8 ; Celtic form, 123 ; ham- 
mer of fertility (thunder), 

130, 156; German, 155 f., 161 f. 



Thoth, 310, 319, 324, 340. 

Thucydides, 501. 

Thugs, stranglers, religious sect, 
42, 207. 

Thunder, 8, 91 ; god of, 95, 109. 
See Thor. 

Thutmose, king, 314, 324 f., 332 f. 

Tiamat, 315, 350 f. 

Tiber, Father, 538. 

Tiele, C. P., 2, 4, 229. 

T'ien, Sky-Heaven, Fate, 236, 
262. 

Tierra del Fuego, 20. 

Tiglath Pileser, 347. 

Tirthankara, Jain hero, 180. 

Titans, 497, 502. 

Titicaca, lake, as divinity, iii f. 

Tiu, 43, 155 f., 172. 

Tlaloc, 96 f., 99, 115; frog-fes- 
tival of, loi; Paradise of, 105. 

Todas, 43. 

Toltec civilization, 94 f. 

Tomb, as temple, 331. 

Tophet, 426. 

Torah, 440. 

Torana, Torii, 282. 

Tornassuk, yy. 

Tortoise, for longevity, 243. See 
Avatar, Divination. 

Torture, 91. 

Totem, 20 f ., 29, 50, 60, 65 f., 
80 f., 112, 126, 156, 284; in In- 
dia, 170, 175; Egypt, 316; not 
Semitic, 417; not Roman, 528. 

Trade, gods of, American, 104, 
no; Mercury, etc., 526. 

Traducianism, 573. 

Tragedy, 502. See Drama. 

Translation of heroes, 359. 

Transubstantiation, 560, 582. 

Trees, sacred, cult of, 28, 60, 80, 
109 ; of heaven, 96 ; oak and 
mistletoe, 127; oak spirits, 129; 
oak and linden, male and fe- 
male, 140; Slavic cult, 143 f.; 
German, 158; oak and oath by, 
160, 166; stone and tree, 170; 
holy, in China, 246; in Egypt, 
314; acacia, 452; of life, of 
knowledge, 352 f . ; in Arabia, 



622 



INDEX 



365, 366; of hell, 466; Greek, 
495; religion as tree, see Re- 
ligion. See Druid, Dryad, 
Grove. 

Triads, Buddhistic, 192, 205 i.; 
Vishnuite, 217; Chinese, 270; 
Japanese, 307; Egyptian triads 
and enneads, 319 £., 340; 
Babylonian, 347 f., 349, 361 ; 
Greek groups of three, 486; 
Roman, 526 ; Christian, 562, 
566. Triratna, three Jewels, 
288. Doctrine of Trinity, 560, 
571. 

Troy-circles, 133. 

Tuisto, 151. 

Tupan, 108. 

Tukaram, religious poet, 215. 

Tuisi Das, 214. 

Turanians, 381. 

Twelfth Night, 152. See Epiph- 
any. 

Twins, sacrificed, 115. 

Tyche, Fortune, 508. 

Tylor, Sir E., 6, 18, 37. 

Ucchishta, remnant of sacrifice, 

Vedda form, 58. 
Uitzilopochtli, 103. 
Unction, extreme, 569, 581. 
Underworld, 524. See Escha- 

tology. 
Unitarians, 567, 592. 
Unitas Fratrum, 584. 
Universalist doctrine, 564; Uni- 

versism, in China, 228. 
Unkulunkulu, ancestral god, not 

God, 28. 
Upanishads, 176 f., 216, 512. 
Urabe, diviners, 284. 
Usener, H. K., 139 f ., 172, 428. 
Ushebti, Egyptian conception, 

328. 
Utnapishtim (Parnapishtim), 

254 f M 358. 

Vairocana, Brilliant, form of di- 
vinity, 289, 293, 298. 
Valentinus, Gnostic, 563. 
Valerian, Emperor, 565, 572. 



Vallabha (calf, darling) , sect of, 

215. 

Vallee-Poussin, L. de la, 196. 

Vampires, 146. 

Vanir, gods, 162. 

Vardhamana, see Mahavira. 

Varro, 541. 

Varuna, god, 27, 70, 172 f. ; Aztec 
parallel, 194. 

Vasudeva, title of Krishna, 210 f. 

Vayu, wind-god, 172. 

Veda, 18, 50 ; religion of, 172 f . ; 
Rig Veda, songs to gods, 9, 
28, 62, 66; date of, 171, 373; 
authority of disputed, 180. 
See Atharva Veda. 

Vedanta, monistic pantheism, 
178. 

Veddas, religion of, 57. 

Vediovis, volcano-god, 523, 540. 

Vegetarian monks, Aztec, 106; 
Indie, 220; vegetarianism in 
China, 272. 

Vegetation-spirits, see Grain- 
spirit. 

Veles and Vile, Slavic spirits, 
142, 146. 

Vendidad, Zoroastrian code, 371, 
374 f., 390, 400 f . 

Venus, 537; Celtic, 134; planet, 
as war-goddess, 361 ; American 
conception, as page of sun, 
104, 112; Babylonian, 348; in 
Lucretius, 542. 

Verethraghna, 411. 

Vergil, 121, 536, 541, 545 f., 548. 

Vesta, Hestia, 523, 545; Augusta, 
546; Vestal Virgins, of Peru, 
114, 116; of Ireland, 131; of 
Rome, 523, 529, 531, 537. 

Veyopatis,-mate, Slavic wind- 
deity, 140. 

Vinaya sect, 293. See Buddhis- 
tic literature. 

Vintius, ventus, 123. 

Viracocha, Peruvian god, 113 f. 

Virgin,-birth, 26, 103, 375, 552, 
579; Mary as, 113; as cattle- 
goddess, 144 ; in the Trinity, 
217; mentioned in Chinese 



INDEX 



623 



monument, 2'J2>. See Mariol- 

atry. 
Vishnu, 174, 178, 205, 209 f. 
Vision, of Prophets, 433- 
Vitus, St., see Svantovit. 
Vivekananda, 221 f. 
Vohu-mano, Good Mind, 385 f. 
Volcano-spirit, Araucanian, 109; 

Peruvian, 114; Roman, 523. 
Volcanus, fire-god, 538. 
Volsci, 121. 
Vohurnus, 538. 
Voodoo, 30. 
Votan, 95. 
Vows, 40; herem vow, 417; 

Roman vota, 532. 

Wahabites, Mohammedan sect, 
481. 

Waldo, Waldenses, 584. 

Walhalla, 154, 157, 164. 

Walker, Williston, 589. 

Walkyries, 165. 

Walpurgis, 152. 

Wanderers, sects of, 479. 

Wanga magic, 30. 

Wang Ch'ung, Epicurean, 263. 

Wang Yang Min, 265, 304. 

War-chief, as god, 97, no, 241, 
348. 

Washing, 2>Z^ y2, 86; apotropaic, 
112. See Lustration. 

Water, 32; cult of, 86, 90, 98, 
113; home of fire, 102; Celtic 
water-spirits, 129; Slavic, 142; 
ordeal by, 152, 279; bitter, 
417; of sky, 351; in Avesta, 
385; of life, 462; Greek, 495; 
Roman, holy, 546. See Bap- 
tism, Fish, Fountain, Muses, 
River, Sea, Taboo, Washing. 

Weapons, as divine, 152. 

Welsh, 121. 

Wesley, John (and Charles), 
592. 

Westermarck, E. A., 130. 

Westminster Confession, 591. 

Whitefield, George, 592. 

Wicklif, 584 f. 

Widows, 90. See Suttee. 



Williams, Sir Monier, 2; S. 
Wells, 227. 

Wind or Direction gods, 86, 90 f ., 
107; colours of, 92; Aztec, 
103; Indie, 172; seven winds, 
351 : good and bad winds, 
496, See Vintius, Woden. 

Wisdom, divine, Sophia, 440, 
508. 

Witch, sacrifice of, 239; witch- 
craft, savage, 19, 39, 76, 83, 
140, 172; Slavic, 148; Moham- 
medan, 464. 

Woden, 155 f. ; as wind, 157. 

Wolf-cult, 142; demon, 156; 
were-wolf, 165. 

World-soul, see All-soul. 

Worthy, title of Buddhist saint. 
See Arhat. 

Women, 84; cause of woe, 88, 
105, 170; Paradise of, 100; 
priestesses, no; German view 
of, wise women, 150, 165 ; in 
Buddhism, 189; in China, In- 
dia, Greece, 242; dead women 
as demons, 245; in Greek re- 
ligion, 483; Roman, 528; in 
Mithra-cult, 412. 

Works, good, in salvation, 586. 
See Karma, Opus operatum, 
Supererogation. 

Wright, W. K., 5. 

Wundt, W. M., 69. 

Wu-tsung, persecution of, 273. 

Wu-wei, sect, 250, 272. 

Wyrd, 166. See Fate. 

Xavier, F., 303, 305. 
Xenophanes, 500. 
Xerxes, 36. 

Yahweh (Jehovah), 7, 415!, 
422; Baal-, 425, of Sabaoth, 
432 ; -nissi, 425 ; Elohim, El 
Shaddai, 435. 

Yaku, spirit as ghost, 58. 

Yama, 172; Aztec parallel, 105; 
heaven of, 175; in China, 270; 
Yima, 389, 396. 

Yamato-Damashii, 287. 



624 



INDEX 



Yanas, schooli of Buddhism, q. v. 

Yang and Yin, 228; philosophy 
of, 247 f., 263. 

Yashts and Yasnas, 375 f., 384. 

Yazatas, Izads, 384 f . 

Year-demon, 12, 507. See Hera. 

Yezedis, devil-worshippers, 33. 

Yggdrasil, 166. 

Yih King, 224, 226, 237, 247. 

Yima, see under Yama. 

Yoga, Yogin, discipline of, 
178; power of, 201; in Bud- 
dhism, 188; Yogacara, 200; 
Hosso, 293 ; bhakti as Yoga, 
214; Yogin, Indie, 66, 2C^; 
Chinese, 266. 

Yule log, 153. 

Yupanqui, 113. 

Zadok, Zadokites, 425, 436. 



Zechariah, 434, 439, 441. 

Zeidites, sect, 480. 

Zemipati, -luks, 141. 

Zen sect, 292, 295. 

Zendo, 297 f. 

Zeno, 500, 506. 

Zeus, origin of, 521 ; German 
form of, 156, 172; Greek god, 
484 f., 487 f ., 489, 497, 501 f . 

Ziggurat, Aztec form, 103. 

Zinzendorf, Graf von, 591. 

Zionism, 450. 

Zodiac, lunar, 244; divine, 5o8w 

Zoroaster, Zarathustra, religioa 
of, 371 f., 552 ; and Slavic cult, 
145; and Vedic religion, 171, 
248, 372; and other cults, 383, 
398, 405, 442 ; literature of, 375. 

Zulus, 25. 

Zwingli, H., 582, 585. 



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